the.com/concrete jungle

Nature lost the lease, but pigeons renegotiated the terms.

means A densely built, high-rise city environment seen as harsh, impersonal, and almost a wild ecosystem of its own where survival rules still apply.

from A 20th-century metaphorical coinage pairing 'concrete,' the literal building material of modern cities, with 'jungle,' long used figuratively in English for any dense, lawless, survival-of-the-fittest environment (as in 'law of the jungle'). The phrase caught on through mid-1900s writing about urban poverty and alienation, and was cemented in popular culture by songs and films using it to cast the city as a wilderness with concrete trees and asphalt undergrowth — nature's rules, just rebuilt in steel and cement.

origin
Coined to describe dense, dehumanizing cityscapes
temperature
Cities run hotter than surrounding land by design flaw
irony
More biodiversity thrives there than most suburbs
pop culture
Immortalized by Bob Marley, not city planners
the.com · every word