Good point about high rise living. Nobody seems to be asking why do we need them in the first place.

My point about the residents pinching the fire doors was really about lack of maintenance.

Back in the sixties we built all those concrete monstrosities and architects won awards. By the eighties those same architects were defending their designs by pointing out that the councils never maintained them as they were supposed to and if the had they would be fine. I am not convinced about that but the point is well made.

Public housing should not be designed or built with the assumption that a high degree of ongoing maintenance is required for it to be safe and pleasurable to live in.

I suspect that is exactly what the designers of the single staircase tower block are now saying. It will be fine because we have safety doors and sprinklers etc. But they cannot guarantee that in the future the safety measures will be maintained or even if they are they are up to the job, the cladding was supposed to be fire proof.

Design should be based on redundancy e.g. if the sprinklers don't work or the staircase if blocked no problem there is a second staircase. If the fire doors have been nicked not good but the walls and floors are made of stuff that will not burn....

One more point

Agreed however you can make assumptions about known risks.

Every week there are stories in the press about people living in dreadful conditions because the local council hasn't done maintenance so this is not an unknown risk and should be built into the design.

One more point

High rise buildings have been considered to be attractive from the perspective of low carbon usage, preventing urban sprawl, reducing travel needs and building costs.

It may however be better to have high density medium height building.

This from Edinburgh Napier University

Our results show that density is indeed needed for a growing urban population, but height isn't. So it seems the world needs more Parises and fewer Manhattans – as much as I love New York – in the next decades."

[Link]

Exactly, it's not like they've gone to the nth degree and some amazing circumstance damages health or claims life. It's money more morals. Especially where the poor are concerns. The same was true or dodgy cladding. It was known that corners were cut and it potentially endangered those within these buildings, but the 'make hay' attitude was at the forefront until the enviable happens.