Safety is an essential dimension of urban sustainability. In a sustainable city, safety ensures each person a place to live free from danger but also has the possibility of movement that is essential to place attachment and one’s quality of life (UN-Habitat, 2013, 2017, 2019). The adoption by member states of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (UN, 2019) and the New Urban Agenda have provided a global blueprint towards better connected, mixed use and compact cities and human settlements. Additionally, the adoption of UN system-wide Guidelines on Safer Cities and Human Settlements provides further guidance to national and local governments to plan and make cities and human settlements safer. The UN-Habitat’s approach is premised on ‘preven-tion’ rather than reaction, to effectively address the complex challenges of urban insecurity, crime and violence. Placing public places and public transit avail-ability, use and access at the center of the urban safety debate is a new way of understanding the role of cities and local governments in the prevention of crime and violence. Challenging traditional assumptions about urban crime and violence to make cities places of hope should influence global understanding of how individuals use and access the city in differentiated experiences.