Ran into that last night, it is annoying!

Thanks for the comment about centering -- but even after being told about that, I would try to center the square I wanted and the map would still jump sometimes; it appears to be very finicky.

This has been irritating since the first game, the only workaround is to zoom the map down so that the city covers the whole screen, then it won't jump.

Workaround is this: place your first improvement anywhere.  This automatically centers your screen.  Then, without moving (except maybe zooming in or out if you wish), cancel the improvement in the build screen, and place the improvement exactly where you want.

A bit annoying but you get used to it (and less annoying than the 100+ crashes when playing a typical game...and you get used to that as well eventually)