Did You Know?
Over 1,600 Square Kilometres and No Zoning
Houston is the largest US city with no zoning code. Voters have rejected zoning three times — in 1948, 1962 and 1993 — leaving a city where a petrochemical yard, a taqueria and a townhouse block can legally share a street corner.
The result sprawls across roughly 1,650 square kilometres, and the metropolitan area keeps growing outward faster than almost anywhere else in the country.
The clock: Houston runs on Central time, UTC−6 in winter. It is also the city that runs Mission Control, which means part of Houston works on GMT, the time kept aboard the International Space Station.