The ban on windowless bedroom is at least partly about fire safety. A window provides an escape route for low floors, or a means for firefighters to rescue the occupants.

Windows aren't used for that in the US, the rules for them are only concerned about lighting. 100% of American thinking here is that if they were poor, they would want to live somewhere nice, so they just ban anything that isn't "nice" to prevent anyone from possibly forcing them to live in it.

Bullshit. Check the municipal fire code in any major US city. There are explicit requirements around using Windows for egress and fire rescue.

Windows above the first few floors. See the thread. You'd have to break into them, since they aren't required to be openable.

> Windows aren't used for that in the US

Yes they are, and I say this as someone who lived in a shithole apartment that had a fire scare and needed the Fire Dept to help out. Egress windows and fire trucks with ladders exist for a reason.

The GP's point is that levelheaded cost-benefit analyses on things like that seem to escape regulators, and everything is greatly skewed towards "it's worth it if it saves even one life".

Sure, fire safety in homes is a good thing to have. But is it so good that we can't economically build buildings to meet them, and people end up with no home at all?

We can economically build buildings with windows on all the bedrooms. That has virtually zero impact on the final price to residents so complaining about it is a total red herring. The actual problem is high land prices, slow permit approval processes, and restrictive zoning codes.

You can easily build them without windowless bedrooms, yes.

The problem is you can't easily convert office buildings to housing without these, because the floor plates are too different.

That's only one of many problems with converting office building to residential. While a few conversions have succeeded, usually it's cheaper to just demolish the building and start from scratch. Allowing windowless bedrooms won't change that.

> While a few conversions have succeeded, usually it's cheaper to just demolish the building and start from scratch

Do we have cases of Japan or China converting industrial or office spaces into residences?

I've no idea about Japan or China, but I do know that "office-to-resi" has become reasonably common in the UK.

Since 2013, it's been classed as "permitted development" (so, automatically allowed as long as the building isn't listed as architecturally or historically important), and liberalised further in the early 2020s.

House prices have outstripped commercial rents for most of this century, and change of use is cheaper than demolish-and-rebuild, so I'd expect to see the trend continue.

The issue with unsuitable floor plates is real, though, particularly in larger buildings. One solution is to cut chunks out of the curtain wall, turning part of each floor into an open-air terrace which functions as a light well. The reduction in useable floor area means that's only really viable at the premium end of the market, though - a prominent (albeit mixed-use) example is https://www.constructionenquirer.com/2024/07/18/striking-new...

> We can economically build buildings with windows on all the bedrooms

There is a lot of space inside buildings and blocks that must be kept open to permit windows in every bedroom.

When I first moved to New York, I illegally subletted a windowless bedroom. That let me save enough money to (a) enjoy my twenties and (b) launch a start-up. When I got a windowed bedroom, I wound up putting sound-absorbing black-out curtains on them for years.

> The actual problem is high land prices, slow permit approval processes, and restrictive zoning codes

These are bigger problems. But the the blind window requirement is a part of the second two. On its own, it isn't prohibitive. Tied together with a million other petty requirements and your minimum costs balloon.

> ban on windowless bedroom is at least partly about fire safety. A window provides an escape route for low floors, or a means for firefighters to rescue the occupants

New York City's fire engines can't reach its skyscrapers' top floors. Not saying you can achieve similar resuls with office-to-residential conversions. But windowless bedrooms aren't a non-starter because of fire safety, they're a non-starter because they make wealthier residents uncomfortable.