No zoning laws

More foreign language. Houston has no zoning laws. Try driving down the I610 South towards Galveston. I did today. It's a big, wide road.  Along each side of it there is a random mixture of oil refineries, churches, houses, "gentlemens' clubs", video shops, Taco takeaways, "Chicken and biscuit parlors, schools, hotels, hospitals, scrubland, railway marshalling yards and more. Randomly dropped all over the place with no logic or order. None, I promise you. Like some child's toy box upturned and shaken over the floor to see what is there.

No zoning means no planning controls. You can put what you like where you like apparently. And people do, clearly. NASA Johnson Space Centre is opposite a block or two of new condominiums "now renting" on the seafront.  To an English ear "now renting" sounds like the condo has found itself somewhere to live but I suspect means that there are apartments available to rent.

Oh, answer this one- why is Mission Control for the shuttle in Houston, Texas, when it launches from Cape Canaveral, Florida?

Because that's where President Johnson wanted it to be, in Texas, his home state (he was a senator at the time, not president).  So there.