I grew up in a neighborhood that had a drug den next to the 7-11 that all the kids went to buy slurpees at.
The dealers didn't bother the kids, and the kids knew not to go into that yard.
There were plenty of street walkers on a particular stretch of streets. They weren't talking to anyone who wasn't looking to buy.
Of course I had the advantage of being a broke kid at the time, so I wasn't a mark for crime. I was just another neighborhood kid who was walking through. It was a working class neighborhood with a few sketchy parts. There was the occasional shooting or drive by, and property theft was common (every bike I had as a kid was stolen from me at some point), but it wasn't unsafe in regards to violence.
I almost impaled myself on a rebar pole while jumping my bike over hills at an abandoned construction site. That was the most dangerous thing that ever happened to me growing up there. (well aside from the time I almost died falling into a sink hole and managed to grab onto a nearby tree root and pull myself up in time, but that was in the middle of nearby woods, so not gonna blame that on societal problems!)
