Again, most buildings are low rise, especially old buildings, so of course most soft story buildings are low rise. But both low rise and high rise buildings can be soft story.
The reason buildings don’t collapse under shear (think side to side force like would be applied by strong wind or an earth quake) is in part because the interior walls offer shear strength. If you have too few interior walls, and you haven’t compensated via other mechanisms like stronger sheathing, then you risk catastrophic collapse. This is a risk in old construction where walls may have been removed or in cases where building weren’t constructed to appropriate standards. In Turkey, this was particularly bad because the use of concrete in floors and roofs results in more shear force.
The tl;dr is that this isn’t a low-rise vs. high-rise thing. It’s mostly an old vs. new thing.
The reason buildings don’t collapse under shear (think side to side force like would be applied by strong wind or an earth quake) is in part because the interior walls offer shear strength. If you have too few interior walls, and you haven’t compensated via other mechanisms like stronger sheathing, then you risk catastrophic collapse. This is a risk in old construction where walls may have been removed or in cases where building weren’t constructed to appropriate standards. In Turkey, this was particularly bad because the use of concrete in floors and roofs results in more shear force.
The tl;dr is that this isn’t a low-rise vs. high-rise thing. It’s mostly an old vs. new thing.