Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(orig. US) able to survive in the inner city or the ghetto streets despite a lack of material, bourgeois advantages.

1959		Chicago Daily Trib. 24 Oct. 4: While many honest men climbed, dozens of unscrupulous street wise and alley sharp men scrambled up the ladder.
1965		C. Brown Manchild in the Promised Land (1969) 435: Rock was street-wise. He knew about hurting people and even about killing people.
1975		Sepe & Telano Cop Team 26: Telano had encountered a street-wise cop who recognized an undercover operative.
1980		M. Thelwell Harder They Come 201: Many of these slick, streetwise urbanites were not long from the country.
1981		Guardian Weekly 6 Sept. 4/5: A couple of expressions have only come my way in the last month or so. One is ‘street wise’ and the other ‘street cred’.
1985		R.G. Barrett You Wouldn’t Be Dead for Quids (1989) 143: Two attractive but street-wise blondes .
1992		V. Headley Yardie 36: Behind the tough streetwise facade [...] the boy was intelligent.
1993		G. Disher Deathdeal [ebook] [A] common ground [...] something hard and streetwise.
1993		L. Rodríguez Always Running (1996) 43: [of an automobile] Bouncing lowriders, streetwise ‘shorts’ [...] which cruised the main drags of local barrios.
2006		G. Malkani Londonstani (2007) 22: He was as streetwise as those dicks who wear hats to horse races.
2010		A. Steinberg Running the Books 4: A book-slinger with a badge and a streetwise attitude.
2021		T. Swerdlow Straight Dope [ebook] Robert Lee is a big, dark, well-worn cat, streetwise and countrified at the same time.