People would certainly be more fit in such a world. In ours, climbing 20 stories is not something many people can do at all, never mind do willingly every day. But even for a fit person, 20 stories at 10sec/story is definitely not "generous", more like a great athletic achievement given how strenuous it is to climb stairs compared to walking or running on flat ground. Gravity is a bitch.
But tell you what. I'll try the experiment later today.
Absolutely not. Before elevators most buildings would stop at around 5 stories. Climbing 20 stories is not just time-consuming[0], it's also quite tiring, you're dragging your own mass 60m upwards on a very steep slope.
And that's basically discarding older adults entirely, according to "Functional predictors of stair-climbing speed in older adults" individuals ascend about 1.3 steps per second for 8~10 steps.
> That would be nothing compared to the alternative of there being 1-3 floor houses everywhere, so you'd need to commute even further than that.
The alternative would be necessarily rethinking the entire mess and either creating much wider buildings or going back to a much more decentralised model.
> This is on the order of time that it takes many people to walk from their parked car to the front door at work, or even just to park their car!
Walking level ground and climbing stairs is not the same effort at all.
[0] and 10 seconds per floor is absolutely not generous, it corresponds to a high-cadence stair-stepper setting (100 steps/mn, assuming 16 steps/flight which is about what you get in a residential building, an office building would be 18~20 steps/flight)
And before elevators housing prices and density aren't what they are now. You'd find a lot of people willing to traverse 20 stories if it meant not living a 30 minute commute away. So we really don't have any real-world data for this.
> Walking level ground and climbing stairs is not the same effort at all.
Sure. But I think my point of this comparing favorably to commutes stands. Also, given the statistics of adults who under-exercise this is a win-win, traversing stairs at every opportunity is a great way to get a workout in.
> 10 seconds per floor is absolutely not generous
Those 10 seconds per floor was probably overly optimistic. FWIW I live on the 4th floor and (I just timed it) it takes me around 35 seconds to go up from the ground floor at the pace I usually do, and would be comfortable maintaining for 5x that distance. I take every second step. That's 8.75 seconds/floor.
> which is about what you get in a residential building, an office building[...]
Keep in mind that those office buildings have more distance between floors partly because they're designed in a world where the elevator exists. If we're supposing that elevators hadn't been invented there would be a market pressure to construct buildings that made it easier to go up the stairs.
In one of my previous jobs, our office was on 17th floor, and one day each week before lunch we'd all take elevator to floor level, and then climb these 17 floors back up. Let me tell you, last 4 floors are nothing like first 4 floors. Just try it for yourself one day -- find a 20 story building, climb to the top, see how tired you are, and how much time it took you, and then consider that you'd have to do it 2-4 times a day on average.
I suggest you actually try it once, it will probably be eye-opening.
And then of course you may want to consider that not everybody is a fit healthy young adult.
> Keep in mind that those office buildings have more distance between floors partly because they're designed in a world where the elevator exists. If we're supposing that elevators hadn't been invented there would be a market pressure to construct buildings that made it easier to go up the stairs.
No. Office buildings have more space between the floors for conduits and the like. You can bet your damn ass if they could pack more floors in the same vertical space they'd do so.
I'd guess very few -- I work in a 23 story office building (on the 20th floor, coindidentally), and from my desk I can see the stairway door in the hallway.
Other than maintenance staff, I don't remember seeing a single person use that door. We have another office on the 15th floor, and I know of no one that uses the stairs to travel the 5 floors from office to office.
So I think the number of people that want to climb 20 stories by stairs every day is very low.
I live 270 ft up a hill, and regularly walk up. At 10 feet per story, that's 27 floors. I'm also the only one on the hill who walks up it.
I have a feeling the people who installed elevators in buildings thought it through.
Just waiting for and taking the elevator will easily take a minute at least. So we're left with just over 2 minutes.
This is on the order of time that it takes many people to walk from their parked car to the front door at work, or even just to park their car!
That would be nothing compared to the alternative of there being 1-3 floor houses everywhere, so you'd need to commute even further than that.
Almost all of the tall houses in Amsterdam built in pre-elevator times have a hook on the top floor that can be used to hoist cargo up. Some similar arrangement could be worked out for modern houses if they didn't have elevators.