A city’s character is not tested on a good day, but in the quiet hours after a disaster, when the smoke settles, sirens fade and residents look at the charred outline of a home that used to anchor an entire life.
The Tai Po fire, which engulfed several blocks of subsidised government housing and left families displaced overnight, has forced Hong Kong into a rare moment of civic introspection. A tragedy on this scale is a stress test of our assumptions about urban planning, insurance, finance and…