Economics also plays a part. If you're going to build a slaughterhouse, you don't put it in the middle of an expensive subdivision. Not only would the land be too expensive, but the nuisance suits would kill you. But the big gripe about Houston among urban planners is our urban sprawl. Houston and Los Angeles are the poster children of that phenomenon.
Urban planning means land-use controls.
You don't build homes, apartments, offices and manufacturing plants where your customers want them. You build them where the urban planners believe they best fit the master plan for the area. There's a certain logic to land-use controls. But it assumes that urban planners are smarter than the market. No knock on them, but they are not.