Politics

Some fire coding stuff is just beyond stupid. Like the part that requires access to two fire exits - all it does is guarantee that all apartment buildings will be long thin buildings with apartments all exiting into a long double-sided corridor with a staircase at each end (because that's the geometrically most space-efficient way of meeting that requirement). And those corridors suck. They suck out a ton of space from the building, they suck the energy from your body as you walk through a big miserable unsafe-feeling (because it's literally all doors in every direction) windowless liminal space of a corridor (seriously, it feels like you're walking through The Matrix and not in a good way), they suck away neighbourliness (because nobody wants to have a conversation in the hallway, because it's the least private-feeling place ever, and it's also miserable for the above reasons), and they suck out family (I.e. 4bedroom) apartments (because they're hard to fit into the long-thin buildings that the double-doored corridor forces).