This article is talking about prefabricated single family homes i.e trailers. For environmental reasons you don’t want massive trailer parks because they generate huge transport carbon emissions from intensive vehicle use; cities need denser housing than these can provide. In a trailer park fire safety is achieved by having a space all around each trailer as a fire break. You can’t stack lightweight traileresque pods easily because they don’t contain enough materials with the thermal properties to resist fire spread between apartments because these materials are typically heavy and brittle. The most efficient and cost effective of these materials is drywall which is not well suited to construction where you transport and then lift the finished item into position.Fully welded sheet steel mineral wool sandwich panels could work but they are a lot more expensive than drywall and need to be carefully designed to avoid corrosion issues from condensation. Lightweight fire resistance can be acheived with intumescent coatings but these are expensive and designed for structural fire protection not for preventing fire spread.
luckylion|2 years ago
You pour a foundation / base plate, and then place concrete wall elements (which are fabricated in the factory and delivered to the site, that's the pre-fabricated part) and connect them to assemble the structure. You then add insulation and do the electrical work, plumbing and dry-wall etc the same way you would for a newly created brick-building, though they'll also pre-fabricate many of these parts or have a few generic alternatives to choose between (e.g. on stairs).
alistairSH|2 years ago
What you describe exists, but is usually called prefab housing.
In the US there are two different sets of building codes that apply. Manufactured housing falls under federal rules. Prefab is all local rules - same as traditional built in place housing.