A neighborhood designed with walkers and bicyklists in mind should not have fences on the best best shortcuts. It could be a concrete wall walling off one end of a parking lot. It could be a fence between two condo apartment houses with different owners. It could be a thick row of hedges in a single family home area.
To a walker, this makes a big difference. Walking is slow, so walking a couple of hundred metres just to find oneself in a dead end is annoying. This discourages discovery, and decreases walking in the area. Dead ends and fences also drastically reduce the number of possible good routes from A to B in an area. So walking in the same area becomes repetitive, which further reduces walking.
Maybe this is not an unfortunate outcome in some cases, but the intended one? Do planners and owners expect that walkability will increase crime and loud street life? About crime I say that for each criminal who finds their way into a walkable neighborhood, ten witnesses also do. A dead end will attract zero witnesses, but may attract a nonzero amount of thieves. About loitering: it's often enough to ask people nicely to keep it quiet. A really successful walkable area will be so nice that parents let their young kids play outside. This makes it a "kid area" which can even repel noisy teenagers.
The benefit of pedestrian and bicycle traffic is that it's less bothersome to the people next to it. Pedestrians also have less range, so one can afford to let pedestrians cross straight through one's neighborhood, without worrying that a bunch of people will come from far away and make a lot of noise, as is the case with a large road.
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