Close-up, the picture of the city looks very different. Turns out it's the close-up picture with the zoom lens that provides the best opportunities for creating safe places. One example was provided at the ICA CPTED conference by Jim Diers, Seattle's neighborhood guru. His presentation is on-line at the ICA website.
Dead spaces, such as deserted nooks beneath overpasses, are isolated, not maintained, and ideal for drug dealing, robberies, and nefarious crimes. The neighborhood folks in Seattle decided to turn this one into something more interesting and fun.