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Comment by bluGill | Hacker News Reader

You have a very incorrect build of what modern American construction is like. Yes it is mostly timer-framed, but we have fire codes which means walls are not as thin as you seem to think. Sure if you look at an apartment built in 1950 your summary is valid, but that isn't done anymore.

5 over 1 refers to section 1 and section 5 of the building code and not the number of floors built for each. It is coincidence that with section 5, five floors is about the max you can have - but that is an about (sometimes 4 is all, sometimes you can get 6 - see a proper civil engineer for details). Section 1 is a lot more expensive to build, but it is also higher strength (and other features that make is useful for a parking garage)

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5-over-1, 5-over-2, 4-over-1, and 3-over-1 are all often used terminology and they're referring to the number of floors in a podium-constructed building, not different sections of IBC. All of these podium construction styles are a product of section 510.2 of the IBC which allows for these to be treated as two separate buildings for fire purposes.

https://www.woodworks.org/resources/code-path-and-requiremen...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5-over-1

it's still cheap and shitty and doesn't isolate sound, causing all sorts of problems with the neighbors that don't need to exist.

thick concrete walls might as well be hypothetical, theoretical building material given how much not expensive it is, and thus how much rarer it is.

The use of masonry is limited by the requirements to withstand severe earthquakes, which are endemic throughout much of the US. I’ve lived in apartments that were effectively soundproof but those were legacy buildings where the interior concrete and masonry walls were not engineered to withstand earthquakes. It is pretty expensive to build apartments that are soundproof and can survive a magnitude 8+ earthquake. You can’t just throw building mass at the problem as is so common in Europe. Buildings need to have a lot of elastic flex to them.

The type of construction doesn't really matter. There are soundproofing materials that can be installed behind drywall.

It's not "cheap and shitty", it's sustainable (unlike concrete), flexible (I can modify walls easily) and with good sound proofing quieter than concrete.

I lived in a 100+ year old wood framed apartment building. The lifespan of concrete in most climate would mean that building would abandoned and too expensive to repair.

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