The new terrorism comes to Ground Zero

IN THE 16 YEARS AFTER THE Twin Towers fell, the desolation of lower Manhattan in time gave way to a blossoming. When Sayfullo Saipov drove his rented Home Depot truck onto a bicycle path at 3:04 p.m. on Oct. 31, killing eight people beneath its wheels, he careened down the Hudson River Greenway, a lushly landscaped urban esplanade. At Houston Street, where he first steered onto the path, a pier now does service as a soccer field. His route south took him past trees, benches and charmingly inventive playgrounds with miniature golf and beach volleyball before he crashed into a school bus at Chambers Street under the glass and steel high-rises of the financial district.

That six of the eight fatalities were tourists came as no shock to New Yorkers, who in the city’s landmark neighborhoods navigate streams of visitors, many astride the Citi Bikes that lay crushed on the asphalt pathway. Foreign visits to the city dropped after 2001, but they have more than doubled since, to nearly 13 million