look at the bottom-left corner of any place page, and you’ll see who created it, if the creator is recorded. the issue with Austin is that there’s a point place “Austin” which nobody but staff (probably) can modify because it’s defined as a town and it has no creator. it’s sort of useless because it has no boundaries. so it looks like someone created “City of Austin” which has proper boundaries but which also has a name that many people might not think to look for.
it’s even worse in Houston, since not only is there a point place “Houston”, but there’s also a “City of Houston” with only very, very rough boundaries. i usually end up using “Greater Houston” since i figure getting back more is better than getting back less.
Changing the point places will probably require nudging staff to make changes to the place data or to otherwise address this: Some non-standard places are not editable even by curators - Bug Reports - iNaturalist Community Forum. but they have many priorities, and i bet this doesn’t rank high on the list.
The other topic of discussion related to Google geography vs iNaturalist places, including how they get linked together, has probably been brought up in 20 different posts in the forum at this point, and i think the bottom line is that this is unlikely to receive any attention any time soon. if it ever gets any attention, it will be at the same time or after the Explore page is revamped, probably.