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The Great American Elevator Tragedy | The Mistakes Series · Revisionist History

• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Pushkin I am. I am proud to say a yimb
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: yes in my backyard. I have come to my ymbi
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: this recently, so I have all the zeal of the
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: recently converted. Yimby stands for building as much housing as
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: is humanly possible, performing stupid zoning laws, outdated building codes.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: Yimb hates minimum lot sizes, setback zoning, mandatory parking requirements,
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: run control anything that makes building new things more expensive.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: Nimby thinks that when it comes to cities, America peaked
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: around nineteen ten and we should just roll back the
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: zoning block one hundred years. Yimby walks through one of
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: those absurdly picturesque New England villages or some breezy southern
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: California beach town, and by the way, Yimby only ever
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: walks or maybe cycles. Yimb never drives and asks where
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: the multi family apartment buildings. My social media feed is
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: basically just other yimbi's shout out to Alicia courtyard urbanists
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: from Chicago, who posts something about how building European style
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: courtyard apartment buildings will save the American Republic every day,
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: and I am so down for every one of those tweets.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: Yimby stands at the intersection of righteous indignation and nerdiness,
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: a street corner where I have lived my entire adult life.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: I am Yimby.
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: Hear me roar.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: So deep into this ever expanding series on mistakes. I
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: asked myself, what would Yimbi's idea of a mistake be?
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: What error, what miscalculation would most enrage the universe of Yimby?
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: And upon consultations with my Yimbi comrades, I've found a
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: single line on a building code proposal filled out by
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: a fire inspector in Glendale, Arizona named Gregory A. Victor,
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: concerning wait for it, elevators. This is the story of
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: the Great American elevator tragedy.
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I could not find a high income country that
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: had fewer elevators per capita than the United States.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: Meet one of the crown princes of YUMBI my new
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: best friend, Stephen Smith, director of the Center for Building
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: in North America. He will guide us through the tangled
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: history leading up to mister Victor's massive air.
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: Greece has about half the elevators that the United States does,
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: which is pretty surprising since Greece has a population of
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: around ten million in the US. Is I don't know,
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: three hundred and forty millions incredible?
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: That's incredible.
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean yeah, I mean a lot of people
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  Speaker 2: in Greece live in a little, four story, four unit
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: apartment building with a tiny, little elevator.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: This is Revision is History, my podcast about things overlooked
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: and misunderstood. Some of you may be thinking, I'm not
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: seriously going to listen to half an hour on elevators,
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: am I? And my answer to you is, oh, yes
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: you are. And at the end you will turn to
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: your loved ones and you will say, I too, am
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: now ymbie hear me, roar What do your friends say
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: about your elevators?
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: And talk about building codes to friends? It's a good
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: way to out of friends. You know, you cannot be serious.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: You don't have long conversations with elevators with your friends.
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: Of course I do it drive them nuts about it elevators.
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: You know, sometimes they'll ask a question about something and
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: I got a little fun fact for them. But it's
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: not a good way to keep friends to talk about elevators.
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: Till I am ers Stephen, I am that exception. Should
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: I ever be at a party with you, Fronds, Should
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: I ever be at a party with you, you have you
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: have carte blanche to trap me in a corner and
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: talk about elevators for two hours.
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: I'm going to talk about something way more. We're gonna
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: talk about like handrails or windows, or you know, pushing
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: it beyond elevators.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: My producer is laughing in the background. The modern elevator
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: is an American invention. The earliest elevators were made in
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: the mid nineteenth century by Elisha Otis of Vermont, whose
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: startup Otis Elevators remains one of the world's largest elevator companies.
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: Otis installed the world's first commercial elevator in the Howart
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: Building on the corner of Broadway and Broome Street in Manhattan, Soho,
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: which still stands. The vertical city in New York that
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: grew up around the Hallwart Building was made possible by
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: Otis's invention. But at some point between then and now,
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: the era of American elevator dominant began to sputter. If
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: you were an ordinary working American who lives in a
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: split level out in the suburbs and works in an
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: office park, maybe you didn't notice, but you know who
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: did Ymby noticed, in particular Stephen Smith. This goes back
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: a few years just after Smith has started a small
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: Ymby think tank center for building in North America. He'd
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: been a journalist, then real estate, but his true passion,
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: he realized, lay elsewhere building codes.
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: I mean, academia doesn't study building codes. The more prestigious
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: you are an as an academic architect, you know, the
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: more esoteric you're getting, and you know degrowth theory and
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: you know things that are kind of divorced from the
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: actual practice of putting one brick on another and nail
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: and a piece of what. So you know, academia didn't
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: cover it. I don't know who else was going to
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: get into it, and you know, get into construction because
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: you love reading and writing. So there's just not a
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: whole lot written about it. So I decided to do
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: it myself.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: He raised money, set up shop, and right away something
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: caught his eye.
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: There was some it was a post on when it
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: back when it was called Twitter, it was still good
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: for this kind of thing that went viral with some
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: developer who had built a little three story, twelve unit
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: apartment building in Minneapolis and was sort of bragging about,
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: you know, it's pretty affordable, and he was kind of listing.
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: He was talking about the simplicity of the project. You know,
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: it's like, doesn't have any parking, great, uh, doesn't have
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: an elevator. And it kicked up sort of like a
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: firestorm on a Twitter. If you elevator, what about disabled?
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: You know, I guess disabled people can just go and
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: die whatever. And I remember thinking like, well, three story
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: building in America, I mean, they never have elevators. That's
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: not that unusual. But at the time I happened to
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: be in France and I was thinking, well, wait a minute,
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: a new three story building in France generally does have
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: an elevator, So why is that? And I asked my friend,
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: who's the architect, you know, how much does an elevator
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: cost in Italy for a three story building? And he
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: was like, I don't know, twenty thirty thousand euros. I said, well,
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  Speaker 2: there must be some missunerstanding. There's no way an elevator
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: costs twenty or thirty thousand euros netally doesn't make any sense.
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: That's a small fraction, you know, in the US that
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: would be I don't know, one hundred and twenty one
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: Why on earth would an elevator be five times the
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: cost in America as it is in Europe. He went
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: back home, moved apartments, and suddenly the question was all
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: he could think about. So you live in Brooklyn.
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: I live in Brooklyn. I live in a five story building.
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: There are two units on each floor. It's on a
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: very small lot. It's on a lot that's roughly the
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: footprint of the building is about twelve hundred square feet
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: and there are five stories, seven apartments over a very
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: popular vintage store.
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: What floor you want.
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: I'm on the third floor. And in Europe it would
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: have been hard to stick an elevator in the building,
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: but you could done it. I've seen I've seen floor
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: plants from France especially, They're very good at sticking out,
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: you know, a little spiral staircase and a very small elevator.
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: You could have gotten an elevator in the building. There
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: is no way in hell you could have gotten an
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: elevator in the building with anything even conceivably close to
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  Speaker 2: our current rules. But in France they would have done it.
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: In France's building would have an elevator.
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  Speaker 1: I believe, and for Steven this was a problem and
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: with the result that when you had a period of
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: your life, as I read in an elevator report, where
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: you were effectively disabled.
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: Yes, I had some mysterious virus in twenty seventeen. Turned
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: out to be the sort of long COVID like illness.
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: Obviously not from COVID because it was twenty seventeen, And yeah,
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: I had I still do have a disease called pots
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: where you stand up and your heart rate goes well,
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: a lot of fatigue, probably an autoimmune disease that has
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: not really been understood very well yet. And yeah, it
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: was difficult. You know, there were definitely days where what
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: happens is when you exert yourself you pay for it
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: physically in kind of intense ways. You get sort of
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: brain fog and extreme fatigue. You know, might sleep twelve
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: thirteen hours the day, and so yeah, there were days when,
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: like I think it would have been nice to go
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  Speaker 2: for a walk, and I didn't because I was on
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: the third floor.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, in one of the most desirable neighborhoods in the
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  Speaker 1: wealthiest city in the premier country in the world, there
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  Speaker 1: is a brand new apartment building that is effectively off limits,
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  Speaker 1: segregated from anyone who is not fit enough to walk
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  Speaker 1: up multiple flights of stairs. And why because the United
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: States has somehow given up on the widespread adoption of
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  Speaker 1: a technology that it invented one hundred and fifty years ago.
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: But you're building, no old person could ever move into
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: your building.
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: I think I'm the oldest person who lives in the
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: middle thirty seven. I mean this is I think I'm
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: the oldest.
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  Speaker 1: See, this is the whole this whole thing is just nuts. Yes,
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: it is nuts. Smith spent two years trying to answer
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: the question of why Americans gave up on the elevator.
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: The result, entitled Elevators, is maybe the most comprehensive. And
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  Speaker 1: I'm not just saying this because I'm yimbi fascinating exploration
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  Speaker 1: of a topic that I'm guessing few of you have
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  Speaker 1: ever thought about. One hundred and twenty two pages beginning
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: with a sentence right out of some nineteenth century novel.
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  Speaker 1: In late twenty twenty, tired of my old Brooklyn apartment,
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: historic and charming, but loud and full of maintenance hassles,
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: I put my co op unit on the market and
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: set out to buy a new condo. Some of the
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: reasons why American elevators are so expensive are not surprising.
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: Chapter four of Smith's magnum Opus is entitled Labor. Labor
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  Speaker 1: is the elephant in the room of the elevator industry.
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: He writes, the workforce that builds and maintains elevators is
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: small and specialized and highly unionized. And nowhere are those
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: things more true than in the United States. The most
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: cost effective way to build an elevator is to assemble
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: the whole thing in a factory, then ship it to
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: the building site and drop it in with a crane.
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: That's what they do in Europe. But in the United
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: States the Elevator Union insists on assembling the elevators themselves,
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: so everything is assembled in the factory, shipped to the
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: building site, then disassembled and put back together in the
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: cramped confines of the elevator shaft where.
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: It's really bad. As the sort of sister industry of
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: the elevators, which is the escalators. I mean an escalator
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: truly is almost fully assembled in a factory abroad and
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: then craned onto site, and in North America you're taking
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: it apart. There was this I found a sort of
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: newsletter from the iue C, the you know the North
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: American Union, where the guy who runs it, or you know,
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: one of the another general president or something is sort
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: of bragging to his membership. I mean he's trying to
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: promote his leadership and he says, you know, you don't
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: know how hard it is to convince an arbitrator that
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: you know, you got to take apart this escalator.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: At that point we were interrupted.
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: I apologize. Somebody's ringing my door out. Okay, I don't
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: know whether that package was for me, but they're going
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: to leave in the lobby because I don't have an
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: elevator in.
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: My builka where were we This is like my kids
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: with with their with their with their Magan tiles, their lego.
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: Like they at the end of the day they take
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: whatever they built and they smush it. Yeah, and then
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: they rebuild it the next day. Yes, exactly like my
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: kids with their magnetiles.
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: There are parts of the elevator I've seen in in
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: settlement agreements or lawsuits. You know, most of the stuff
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: happens behind closed doors are literally in a tight shaft
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: and you don't get a lot of insight into it.
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: But you see it in court cases and in settlement
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: agreements that should not be posted online but are sometimes.
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: And there's this one at an arbitration case or legal case,
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: I don't know what it was, where you know they're
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: saying something like, you know, it's common practice for us
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: to take something apart and put it off together, but
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: you need to prove that you took it apart. So otherwise,
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: what's to say you didn't just hang out playing on
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: your cell phone in the shaft, and so you know,
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: the practice is for you to sign your name on
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: the part, so if you take it apart, the manager
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: can see you really took it apart.
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: Now, as crazy as this is, it doesn't really answer
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: the question. Yes, the elevator unions are stronger in the
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: US than europe. Elevator technicians get paid more. American elevated
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: workers insist on doing dumb things like taking apart, already
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: build elevators like small children with their magnetiles. But none
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: of these things explain why an American elevator would be
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: five times more expensive than its European counterpart. There has
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: to be an even more important reason. I oh, yes, there.
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: Is European cabins are roughly half. For let's say, for
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: a new six story apartment building with a couple of
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: units per floor, the cabin size in Europe is about
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: half the size. Really, the whole rest of the world
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: is about half the size that it is in the
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: US and Canada. And that's because number one, they don't
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: require spaces. I mean, it's for accessibility. But exactly what
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: it is it is never really written down, but probably
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: something like a turning radius for a wheelchair. The European
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: one will accommodate a wheelchair, in fact, that's what it's
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: designed for, but you'll probably have to either back in
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: or back out one or the other.
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: In Europe, Steven Smith's building would have an elevator because
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: Europeans are willing to live with pine sized elevators. In
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: America we aren't, which seems to make good sense, right
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: because what if you had a heart attack and you're
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: on a stretcher, you'd want your exit from your fifth
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: floor apartment to be a speedy and if a as possible,
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: Except that in insisting that elevators be really large for
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: those very rare occasions when a large elevator would be
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: really convenient, you make the elevator so bulky that it
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: can't fit in a lot of smaller buildings, and so
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: expensive that no one trying to build affordable housing has
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: the means to put an elevator in their building, with
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: the result that if you're in a wheelchair, you simply
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: can't live in Stephen Smith's building. And if you have
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: a heart attack on the fifth floor, the medics are
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: going to have to drag you down five flights of stairs.
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: Have you ever heard the expression the perfect is the
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: enemy of the good. This is American elevator policy. This
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: is like saying, too many people are dying in car accidents.
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: Let's mandate that everyone has to drive to the store
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: in a tank. Problem solved, right, Well, that problem solved,
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: But now you have a million other bigger problems like
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: massively congested highways, torn up roads, no parking, and most
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: of all, since a tank costs fifteen million dollars, only
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: super rich people would be able to drive to the store.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: In the spirit of trying to make the world a
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: fair place, we've made the world in this one dimension
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: and a much less fair place.
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: I would say, so, yes, you know, if you're sort
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: of elderly, maybe you'll go into cardiac arrest, and it
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: would be helpful to have an elevator that can accommodate
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: a fully flat stretcher, so you know, someone can continue
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: to do chest compressions on you while you go down.
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: But you know, most people will never be in that situation,
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: or frankly, if they are, they'll die. Anyway, The out
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: of hospital cardiac or rest survival rate is very low,
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: but you know, pretty much everyone gets to a point
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: or at least if you're lucky in life, where you
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: can't really use the stairs, but you could, you know,
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: stand with a walker in a small elevator. So yeah,
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: we really look for these edge cases, try to solve them,
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: and then kind of throw our hands up when people
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: don't have elevators at all, like, oh, it's just a
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: greedy developer or whatever, and just kind of ignored the
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: underlying economics of the situation, which was that if you
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: make the elevator three to four times expensive, you get
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: a lot fewer elevators.
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: Trying to get to perfect when good is good enough
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: is a mistake, and the road to mega elevators was
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: a ligned with one hundred mistakes made over many years,
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: but the one that really provoked my mbire was the
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: mistake detailed on page fifty of Stephen Smith's Elevators, section
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: three dot three dot two, committed in the Heedless Pursuit
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: of Perfection by a certain Gregory, a Victor fire inspector
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: of Glendale, Arizona. You want to design an apartment building in,
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: say to Peka, Kansas. You can't just put the stairs
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: and windows and the fire exits wherever you want. You
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: have to adhere to a set of common standards. And
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: those standards are found in a very big book written
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: and maintained and updated by a nonprofit called the International
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: Code Council, based in Washington, d C. In one of
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: those Bland office buildings not far from the Capitol.
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: Anytime you see an international in a word in the
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: United States related to construction, it's a lie. It's the
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: US Building Code, but it's called the International Building Code,
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: the IBC. It has international aspirations. Everywhere in the country.
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: You st to have its own building code more or less,
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: and then they've sort of become homogenized harmonized over time,
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: and so now there's a national code called the International
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: Building Code, which forms the basis and really the vast
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: vast majority of every code.
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: If you walk down a street and hate the way
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: modern buildings look, or you don't understand why corridors in
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: the hallway of your apartment building are so long, then
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: you have a problem with The International Code Council is
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: one of those shadowy groups that no one has ever
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: heard about that writes the rules of the modern world,
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: and the document that they have so grandiosely named, the
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: International Building Code is crucially not set in stone. Interested
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: parties can propose amendments. Those amendments can be voted on
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: by a special Committee or by the general members of
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: the ICC. The International Building Code is not like the
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: Constitution of the United States, which was last amended in
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: nineteen ninety two, based on a proposal first made in
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: seventeen eighty nine. You need a war or a couple
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: of centuries to change the US Constitution. Not so the
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: International Building Code. It is a living document. And one
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: of those people who set out to take advantage of
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: this fact was Gregory a Victor of the Glendale Fire Department.
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: Greg Victor had white blonde hair, a stash aviator glasses.
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: He grew up in the Phoenix area, served in the
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: Air Force, as an elect trician at Binhoa Air Force
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: Base during the Vietnam War, came home and became a
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: fire inspector for the Glendale, Arizona Fire Department, retiring as
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: the city's fire marshal in two thousand and seven. Quote.
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: He was the driving force behind the fire safety codes
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: that are used in Glendale today. His obituary reads on
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: a national level, he was instrumental in passing fire code
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: to assure firefighters safety in Skyscraper's after nine to eleven.
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: Let me just say that we of the Ymbie movement
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: have no beef with Greig Victor personally. He served his country,
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: his community, his profession. I am quite sure he was
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: a fine and upstanding man. But he wanted perfection and
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: he didn't understand that perfection comes with what is sometimes
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: an unbearable cost. So this guy lit's just so we
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: have a someone who cares, who is passionate about elevators.
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he proposes. He says, you know, at the time,
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: elevators were made to accommodate stretchers that are six feet
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: four inches long. And he says, well, they're building a
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: stadium in my jurisdiction.
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: He files an amendment with the International Building Code.
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: At the time, I don't believe Glendale had any apartment
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: buildings with elevators. Maybe it had one or two, It
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: had very few, if any. It still has very few,
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: if any. And he said, the elevator is not going
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: to accommodate our strutchers. And I don't think. I mean,
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: I think that's maybe true in some sense, like when
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: it's fully flat and extended. I find it difficult to
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: believe that it did not accomodate a structure in any sense.
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: I mean, strutchers do sort of prop up a bit.
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: Sometimes they're a bit collapsible, But in any case, he
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: did not feel it adequately accommodated the stretcher. So he said,
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: you know, the code should just say that the elevator
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: must accommodate whatever structs. Sure, the jurisdiction's got. And this
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: is not in the report. And I want to say,
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: don't quote me, but I'm saying it in a public form,
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: so whatever, I'll just say it. What I was told
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: was at the time, the elevator industry, this was in
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: the early two thousands, the elevator industry had their own event,
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: and so there weren't a lot of people from the
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: elevator industry to push back. So there was some committee,
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: some technical committee that's supposed to review this proposal. That's
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: I think the most informed people in the process generally,
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: and they said, well, there's two things wrong with us.
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: Number One, we can't just say it's got to accommodate
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: the biggest stretcher you've got. I mean they say this,
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: but you know what if someone orders a twenty foot stretcher.
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: I mean, the lack of standardization just can drive everyone crazy.
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: But secondly, you didn't really prove anything exactly, like, you know,
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: what is the harm? You know, can you try away
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: the cost and benefits that wasn't done, So it comes
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: back in another round when it's a little more This
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: this is sort of a quasi democratic body, so all
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: the building officials can vote and he's okay, Well the
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: technical committee said no, but I come to you, the
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: membership and say, you know, all fix it. So okay,
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: it's not going to be any size. It's just gonna
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: be seven feet. I mean ours are I think he
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: said there's or I don't remember, six foot seven, six
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: foot eight, you know, seven feet will be big enough
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: to I don't know, have an oxygen tank on the
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: end or something like that, and it passed.
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: The United States already had the biggest elevators in the world,
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: the most expensive elevators in the world. Elevators so big
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: and so expensive that whenever someone was putting up a
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: small apartment building or an affordable apartment building, they look
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: at the numbers and shrug and say, ef it, we'll
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: just go with stairs. And along comes Greg Victor of Glendale, Arizona,
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: and proposes, to the most powerful body in the whole
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: world of building codes, let's make them even bigger and
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: even more expensive. Let's make them seven feet long. So
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: he comes back and with an amendment saying, okay, just
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: make it seven feet and he takes that to the the.
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: Sort of the broader membership, but he kind of makes this,
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: he makes this emotional case. Imagine if it was you.
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: And there's always an emotional appeal in building codes and standards.
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: I mean, sometimes it's about fire. In this case, it
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: wasn't fire. In this case, it was you know, being
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: you know, having going into cardiac arrest and someone couldn't
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: thumb compressions on you or you get some sort of
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: musculo skeletal injury from falling in the bathtub. Whatever you know,
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: something could happen. So it's an emotional appeal. And the
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: issue with emotional appeals is they don't weigh things very well.
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: You couldn't look it up. International Building Code Code Change
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: number G one forty three three h four Section three
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: thousand and two point four. The International Building Code Amendment
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: form is divided into three parts. Part one is where
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: you write a paragraph explaining your change. Part two is
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: where you give you reasons, and part three is cost
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: impact and do you know what? Greg Victor answers to
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: the cost impact question? None n O n e oh
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: Greg No. Revisious History is produced by Nina Bird Lawrence,
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: Lucy Sullivan, and Ben ADAPFH Haffrey. Our editor is Karen Schakerji.
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: Fact checking by Angelie Mercado. Our executive producer Jacob Smith.
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: Engineering by Nina Bird Lawrence, original music by Luis Kira,
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: Sound design and mastering by Marcelo diela Vera. I'm Malcolm Gladwell.