Last summer a crowd of grad students and young professionals gathered en masse on a back porch in Chicago during a party. It collapsed. Fifteen people perished. The multi-millionaire building owner completed the work without a permit. The work itself was shoddy and led to the collapse. (I walked by the site which became a memorial and you could see the few haphazardly-placed holes where the lag bolts had pulled out the wall when the ledger failed. They were maybe nine or ten in total over twenty-two feet when there should have been atleast two on each side of every joist hanger.) Many complained that paying an Architect $1500 to design a porch was was too expensive and it kept people from obtaining the proper permits. The City of Chicago responded by posting approved porch designs on their web site. And they're very well done. And that's where the irony is.

Because the porches the City has posted are exquisite, they have raised the bar. They are thorough and complete in a market where stapled-together, half-ass schlock is the norm. These porches call for vertical and horizontal rebar in the footings, seat angles on posts instead of notching, 4x4 posts @ every 4 feet of baluster and galvanized stair angles attaching the treads to the stringers. I have NEVER seen a back porch built so well. The irony is that whereas owners were crying about paying a professional to do the job right, the city has raised the bar even higher and I would guess that these porches cost 50% more than run-of-the-mill unsupervised contractor practice. $1500 seems like chump change now, especially in light of the tragedy.

These porches will make the City safer and there's no irony in that. Hats off to the City of Chicago!