"What got my goat about the Countryside Alliance's pronouncements at the time of the foxhunting debate was the simplistic and fatuous differentiation between "their" countryside" and the "townees" in the city. Black and white was all they could see - and there are immense areas of grey."

There certainly are! I live in one of the UK's major cities and for my retirement project I'm trying to catalogue all of our local plantlife. I've found around 500 species, so far, within a half day's walk of my house. I am only 4 miles from the city centre but there is rather a lot of open space around here and mid-week I can easily reach areas of fields and hedgerows and walk for miles and hardly see a soul. Yesterday I found a species that I had been looking for growing by the side of a motorway slip-road. I suspect that many cities are, in fact, more biodiverse than some areas of 'real' countryside - particularly those that are intensively farmed.
Socially, too, the suburb that I live in has always had a village feel (we've even got a village green!) and everyone knows everyone else (with all of the advantages and disadvantages that that implies).