Definition
A city or urban area, where the landscape is covered by pavement and the environment is alienating and unsafe.
Origins
From W. R. Burnett's novel The Asphalt Jungle (1949).
In Context
- "The sound track tingles with cool jazz, the dry atonal music of the asphalt jungle."
- "Harlem comes through as an urban hothouse mean with exotic hustle and violence, a tangible asphalt jungle with its own abrasive laws of motion."