In Western Europe, small new apartment buildings of just three stories typically include a small elevator (and sometimes buildings of just two stories as well). These types of buildings have almost never had elevators in America, and developers are planning and building new five- and six-story walk-ups in some cities. When a developer in Philadelphia or Denver comes across a piece of land zoned for a few stories, elevator expenses are often one reason they build townhouses rather than condos — fewer in number and with higher price tags.

Behind the dearth of elevators in the country that birthed the skyscraper are eye-watering costs. A basic four-stop elevator costs about $158,000 in New York City, compared with about $36,000 in Switzerland. A six-stop model will set you back more than three times as much in Pennsylvania as in Belgium. Maintenance, repairs and inspections all cost more in America, too.

The first thing to notice about our elevators is that, like many things in America, they are huge. New elevators outside the U.S. are typically sized to accommodate a person in a large wheelchair plus somebody standing behind it. American elevators have ballooned to about twice that size, driven by a drip-drip-drip of regulations, each motivated by a slightly different concern — first accessibility, then accommodation for ambulance stretchers, then even bigger stretchers.

The United States and Canada have also marooned themselves on a regulatory island for elevator parts and designs. Much of the rest of the world has settled on following European elevator standards, which have been harmonized and refined over generations. Some of these differences between American and global standards result in only minor physical differences, while others add the hassle of a separate certification process without changing the final product.

If physics is the same everywhere and there are no measurable differences in safety outcomes, why reinvent the wheel (or elevator)? America’s reputation for unbridled capitalism and a stereotype of Europe as a backwater of overregulation are often turned on their head in the construction sector.

America has grown extraordinarily rich from white-collar industries like software engineering and finance. But with email-job couples earning well into the six digits now struggling to afford to live in many American cities, we are bumping up against the limits of what quality of life an economy built on apps can provide. Software and financial engineers can’t make my apartment building accessible, so at some point we must relearn how to build things in the real world. Maybe the elevator can teach us how.