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Thanks for the link. Sorry to say this, but it's also a lesson about what can happen when governments relax building regulations* in response to a housing crisis -- even a legitimate crisis. There are only 2 ... * or assume that what's engineered and on the plans is what actually gets built.

Only 2 even mildly surprising things about this piece (produced w/o seeing the plans or doing any quantitative analysis): 1. The age of the buildings: We kinda expect this in certain pre-1980 (depends on location) buildings, but not from 2011. 2. ...

2. Basically correct for what it says -- not enough wall, hints of shoddy construction, obvious directionality -- but totally whiffing on the obvious key deficiency: a soft & weak first story. Masonry infill itself was not a problem as much as the LACK of infill in the ground story. ...

It's an interesting question, to what extent this was a failure of regulation. On some level, obviously yes (plans were probably not followed, enforcement was lacking); in other ways, no (it was a government project – how much more government regulation can you get than gov't being the owner?).

Yup. The article mentions that the VZ building code required a certain technique for the steel ties that was not followed. It’s not the “regulations,” it’s the inspections. corruption, not deregulation. (The “not X but Y”) framing is my own lack of creativity and not AI.)

Perhaps a case of regulation not being "sized" correctly for the economic decline of the country? It seems like they were expected to be applying some fairly advanced methods that economically/politically they were in no state to actually do correctly, and some basic prescriptive rules that...