Well of course there are always other factors - but citing zoning will get you no traction here, sir. Beyond some very basic limits on things like opening a "vice"-related business of some kind near a church or a school
Houston has no zoning laws. I can open a nail salon next to a restaurant and there's nothing anyone can do about it. See the infamous "Ashby Highrise"
http://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/real-estate/article... as an example of residents taking matters into their own hands and suing developers after City of Houston rubber-stamped a traffic study that would have allowed a high rise complex in the middle of a neighborhood. The residents were forced themselves to sue because they had no other remedy.
Houston's near town development has a long history unique to our area - everything from a former Freedman's town that left lots of prime real estate in the hands of people who really preferred not to sell for development to local management districts using tax money to buy property outside their taxation area in order to prevent or slow gentrification. The area recently expanded to by the Northline extension was considered a blue collar area at best and frankly too crime-ridden and dangerous at worst for any redevelopment. That has turned around with the rail - and since Houston's is an at grade rail, we actually lose one-two lanes of the thoroughfare when rail goes in. Yet North Houston which was the site of the Moody Park Riots is now the target of development and gentrification and you can track that against the rail's expansion.