The city began on August 30, 1836, when Augustus Chapman Allen and John Kirby Allen ran an advertisement in the Telegraph and Texas Register for the "Town of Houston." The town-site, which featured a mixture of timber and grassland, was on the level Coastal Plain in the middle of the future Harris County, at 95.4° west longitude and 30.3° north latitude. When first formed in 1949 the Houston Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area covered only Harris County and had a population of 806,701 people. The increasing use of automobiles also led to the building of expressways in the 1950s that extended over 200 miles by 1990. The prosperity after World War II brought the world famous Galleria shopping mall with its interior ice-skating rink in 1970. In the ordering of urban space Houston politicians and voters have continually rejected the use of zoning. The lack of zoning has not affected development to any great extent, however, since heavy industry concentrated in the area of the ship channel and subdivisions controlled construction through deed restrictions. This casual attitude toward land use encouraged business expansion.

Sources:

Handbook of Texas Online, s.v. "Houston, Texas." http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/HH/hdh3.html Accessed March 5, 2009