asphalt jungle

From W. R. Burnett's novel The Asphalt Jungle (1949).

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asphalt jungle (plural asphalt jungles)

1. (idiomatic) A city or urban area, where the landscape is covered by pavement and the environment is alienating and unsafe.
   • 1962 July 27, “Manhattan's Lower Depths”, in Time‎ (film review of Strangers in the City), archived from the original on 2012-03-07:

     The sound track tingles with cool jazz, the dry atonal music of the asphalt jungle.

   • 1976, A. Robert Lee, “Violence Real and Imagined: The World of Chester Himes' Novels”, in Negro American Literature Forum, volume 10, number 1, page 13:

     Harlem comes through as an urban hothouse mean with exotic hustle and violence, a tangible asphalt jungle with its own abrasive laws of motion.

• concrete jungle