Reddit mentions of The New Geography of Jobs

Streetfight is what you are looking for.

Other books related to this topic in some form or another:

The New Localism

The New Geography of Jobs

The Public Wealth of Cities

Politics of Resentment

The Color of Law

City-County Consolidation

I'm working my way through Enrico Moretti's The New Geography of Jobs. It's from 2012, so the data in it's (a bit) out of date, but many of the ideas still seem rather applicable and relevant, as long as you keep the time context in mind.

Anyway, in part of the book, he's discussing various components to housing costs, and their impacts on reducing relative wages in the face of higher nominal wages from stronger job markets. He brings up weather as being one example of a component that makes humans imperfect when it comes to jobs-relocations, in the context of how that prevents companies' ability to just put offices wherever they want in a liberalized labor market.

He contrasted that with Norilsk, Russia. See, Stalin needed greatly expanded mines there to tap into the Nickel deposits, as well as other metals, for the growing Soviet steel industry. He sent advisors and planners to the area to design a town around extracting those resources. He advisors eventually came back, saying that they feared there was no wage they could offer, no realistic way they could build the town, that would overcome the resistance to working in its conditions.

No matter, Stalin had a plan. He made it a Gulag. After all, the central economic plan demanded the Nickle to feed steel production. It was for the good of the state as a whole to use forced-prison labor, rather than try to convince people who have the choice of where to work. 16,806 prisoners died in Norilsk under the conditions of forced labor, starvation and intense cold during the existence of the camp.

I say all this not to try and claim that all economic efforts under the flag of capitalism is always better (looking at you, slavetrade, and for-profit prisons), just that, as you were saying, a centralized governmental authority does not automatically mean people are better off.

That's why I prefer a mix of systems, with the government providing safety nets, and preserving the opportunity of mobility and preservation of public safety through regulation, while the private sector can offer its own forms of meritorious reward for those who put in the work. The key is to balance the two systems so that they keep each other in check, without getting so out of proportion as to drift into autocratic ruling.