Except that in order to live somewhere he could afford on a London bus-driver's salary, he'd need to be somewhere awful (actually, I don't know whether London h

Except that in order to live somewhere he could afford on a London bus-driver's salary, he'd need to be somewhere awful (actually, I don't know whether London has awful-and-cheap bits these days) or way out of town with a horrible commute. None the less: yes, there are more and better jobs in cities. There's also more competition for those jobs, though. I'll hazard a guess that although there's a lot of unemployment where the OP lives now, the unemployed people there are probably mostly not software developers.