Why do houses have shingles and slanted roofs, but most other buildings have flat tops?
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Shingles are surprisingly durable and their multiple layers give some redundancy
Flat roofs are common on commercial buildings because it gives you a place to put your equipment like large HVAC gear or elevator equipment that needs to protrude out the top. A trade off for being “flat” is that they actually need to slope inwards towards a drain pipe that will transport rain/snowmelt off the roof, and they need to be a lot stronger to deal with the added weight of snow on top
Buildings further from the equator tend to have more slanted roofs to keep snow from building up. Slight slants on a roof can shed snow, but if you’re at risk of getting 36 inches of snow overnight then you need a roof that will physically shed snow regardless of the suns input and that why houses in the US North East have much steeper slants on their roof than houses in Texas and the like where snow is less common and less severe
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