CITY dwellers are more polite and connected than people who live in villages or bland new towns, research has revealed.

And urban friendliness among strangers has been found to put the neighbourly bonds between country dwellers to shame.

Writer and city expert Leo Hollis told the Festival of Ideas many cities could be “places of horror”, but that was because society had forgotten they were about people rather than cathedrals, palaces, and other places in the guidebooks.

He said cities’ “supercharged atmosphere” could pave the way for urban renaissance which may save an over-populated world.

In his Cities Are Good For You lecture, he laid the blame for much of the decay at policies which put traffic before pedestrians and play parks built more for health and safety than the enjoyment of children.

Mr Hollis said: “Cities are possibly the greatest social experiment in human existence.

“As resources deplete cities might be our salvation – an urban ark rather than a concrete coffin.”

Despite being cited as an example of appalling poverty by Joseph Rowntree in 1891, York was now one of the country’s least divided cities, he said.