[newhere420]

Granary Square and More London are in areas that don't tend to have that much of the issues you mentioned.

Canary Wharf is busy in the week because it's full of skyscrapers. But I live just round the corner from it, and it's dead in the evenings or at weekends unless there's a special event going on, despite the relative safety. Other public areas in the surrounding neighbourhoods tend to be a lot busier. And actually, there's a large group of young drug dealers that regularly hang out in the west area of the Canary Wharf development.

That said, the private security forces do indeed do a good job of keeping these areas safe, and free of threatening homeless people and such. Still debatable whether or not that's a thing we should be solving by privatising public spaces...