William Boyd has an interesting article in the Guardian:
Angus Wilson (1913-1991), novelist and short story writer, identified what he called an essential dichotomy in the English realistic novel dating back to Samuel Richardson in the 18th century, namely the concepts of “town” and “country” and the opposing values that they imply. The division is an intriguing one, even today, and it is still relatively easy to classify a novelist in one or the other camp. Are you essentially “urban” or are you “rural”? This is not an innocent question, as Wilson infers. To categorise yourself as one or the other is tendentious and provokes a series of unconscious judgments. In his long autobiographical essay, The Wild Garden, Wilson lists some of the antitheses that “town” and “country” respectively embody: progress versus tradition; art versus nature; industry versus the contemplative life; reason versus instinct; strained sensibility versus sturdy common sense, bohemianism versus rootedness, and so on.
Actually, the piece swerves here, and instead of a delicious disquisition on setting and psyche, Boyd talks about gaming the dichotomy and writing about…parks.
Boyd calls himself an urban novelist. I disagree; I think he’s much less town than country. Thinking of his novels–Brazzaville Beach, Any Human Heart, The Blue Afternoon, and others–recalls to me the open air, the scents of nature, not brick or car exhaust or harried passersby. But, hey, they’re his books; he can call classify them and himself as he likes.
I’d put myself in the country camp when it comes to novel-length fiction, though much of my short fiction is urban–and features parks. How very interesting…
Nicola Griffith 
I find the P.G. Wodehouse divide the one that splits things for me, although I need to dig up the end of the darn quote:
“I believe there are two ways of writing novels. One is mine, making a sort of musical comedy without music and ignoring real life altogether ; the other is going right deep down into life and not caring a damn…” – Sir. P.G.Wodehouse
Although, for my writing, I have gotten a bit too accustomed to the theatre and on the first drafts tend to leave out scenery — either that or I can try to convince you all the landscapes you need you find in the characters or the conversations.
Skip to city!
lonelypond, I think there are some kinds of fiction that don't need much description, just not the kind I write. It's one of those personal preference things–I like green, others prefer red, etc. I fell in love with ambiance probably before I could even read…
Maybe I'm too American, but this whole thing meant nothing to me.
*Such* a good question – esp for fantasists! Tolkien set the mark with LOTR and his love of countryside – and a generation of American (& Brit?) fantasists then had to dig their way out of his love and knowledge into our own spaces, which tended to be Urban. In the 1980s worked a lot with Terri Windling, culminating in the Bordertown series, which some say was the start of Urban Fantasy….Still going on today.
Me, I made up an entire city to play in, and 3 novels later am still enjoying being there.
jennifer from p, really? Interesting. I've often wondered if the UK connection to the land/heritage thing was unique to the English/Irish/Scottish/Welsh. A juicy subject for another post…
ellen, yep, and I've been enjoying your city right along with you.
Interesting. I've often wondered if the UK connection to the land/heritage thing was unique to the English/Irish/Scottish/Welsh.
No, absolutely not. There are many US writers who are all about the countryside (Flannery O'Connor, Carolyn Chute, Norman Maclean, William Faulkner, Willa Cather, Larry McMurtry, Louise Erdrich, just to name a few) and many who are purely city writers (Ralph Ellison, Dashiell Hammett, Henry James, Edith Wharton, Damon Runyon, Dorothy Parker, to name a few) and not too many who do both with mastery.
Dawn Powell does come to mind as an exception to that–her “country books,” like “My Home Is Far Away” and “Come Back to Sorrento,” are strongly evocative of rural America, whereas her New York novels, like “The Locusts Have No King” and “The Golden Spur,” are vivid portraits of early 20th-century Manhattan.