District in the context of Polycentric metropolitan area

A metropolitan area or metro is a region consisting of a densely populated urban agglomeration and its surrounding territories which share industries, commercial areas, transport network, infrastructure and housing. A metropolitan area usually comprises multiple principal cities, jurisdictions and municipalities: neighborhoods, townships, boroughs, cities, towns, exurbs, suburbs, counties, districts and even states and nations in areas like the eurodistricts. As social, economic and political institutions have changed, metropolitan areas have become key economic and political regions.

In the United States, metropolitan areas are delineated around the core of a core based statistical area, which is defined as an urban area and includes central and outlying counties. In other countries metropolitan areas are sometimes anchored by one central city such as the Paris metropolitan area (Paris). In other cases, metropolitan areas contain multiple centers of equal or close to equal importance, especially in the United States; for example, the Dallas–Fort Worth metropolitan area has eight principal cities. The Islamabad–Rawalpindi metropolitan area in Pakistan, the Rhine-Ruhr in Germany, and the Randstad in The Netherlands are other examples.

The boroughs of New York City are the five major governmental districts that compose New York City. They are the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island. Each borough is coextensive with a respective county of the State of New York: The Bronx is Bronx County, Brooklyn is Kings County, Manhattan is New York County, Queens is Queens County, and Staten Island is Richmond County.

All five boroughs of New York came into existence with the creation of modern New York City in 1898, when New York County (then including the Bronx), Kings County, Richmond County, and part of Queens County were consolidated within one municipal government under a new city charter. All former municipalities within the newly consolidated city were dissolved.

The 81 provinces of Turkey are divided into 973 districts (ilçeler; sing. ilçe). In the Ottoman Empire and in the early Turkish Republic, the corresponding unit was the kaza.

Most provinces bear the same name as their respective provincial capital districts. However, many urban provinces, designated as greater municipalities, have a center consisting of multiple districts, such as the provincial capital of Ankara province, The City of Ankara, comprising nine separate districts. Additionally three provinces, Kocaeli, Sakarya, and Hatay have their capital district named differently from their province, as İzmit, Adapazarı, and Antakya respectively.

A capital district, capital region, or capital territory is normally a specially designated administrative division where a country's seat of government is located. As such, in a federal model of government, no state or territory has any political or economic advantage relative to the others because of the national capital lying within its borders. A capital territory can be a specific form of federal district.

A distinction should be made between administrative divisions which include national capitals, but have no special designated status legally (for example, Île de France has no distinct quality from other regions of France). Some federal countries (like Belgium and Germany), give their national capitals the status of full, equal federal units.

The 12 Regions of Morocco are subdivided into 75 second-level administrative subdivisions, the Prefectures and provinces. There are 13 prefectures and 62 provinces. Each prefecture or province is subdivided into arrondissements (only in prefectures of some metropolitan areas), municipalities (communes, sing. commune) or urban municipalities (communes urbaines, sing. commune urbaine) in other urban areas, and districts (cercles, sing. cercle) in rural areas. The districts are subdivided into rural municipalities (communes rurales, sing. commune rural). One prefecture (Casablanca) is also subdivided into préfectures d'arrondissements (sing. préfecture d'arrondissements), similar to districts (cercles) except they are grouping a few arrondissements instead of rural municipalities.

Note: The arrondissements and (urban) municipalities should probably be thought of as fourth-level subdivisions, on the same level as the rural municipalities, but they are not part of any district.

Districts of Switzerland are a political subdivision for cantons. In the federally constituted Switzerland, each canton is completely free to decide its own internal organisation. Therefore, there exists a variety of structures and terminology for the subnational entities between canton and municipality, loosely termed districts. Most cantons are divided into Bezirke (German for districts, singular Bezirk). They are also termed Ämter (Lucerne, singular Amt), Amtsbezirke (Bern, Amtsbezirk), district (in French) or distretto (Ticino and part of Graubünden). The Bezirke generally provide only administration and court organization. However, for historical reasons districts in cantons Grisons and Schwyz are their own legal entities with jurisdiction over tax and often have their own Landsgemeinde.

Seven of the 26 cantons – Uri, Obwalden, Nidwalden, Glarus, Zug, Basel-City and Geneva – have always existed without the district level of government. An eighth one, Appenzell Innerrhoden, uses no intermediate level either, but calls its lowest-level subdivisions Bezirke, although they are functionally equivalent to municipalities elsewhere.

A nāḥiyah (Arabic: نَاحِيَة [ˈnaːħijah], plural نَوَاحِي, nawāḥī [naˈwaːħiː]), also nahiyeh, nahiya or nahia, is a regional or local type of administrative division that usually consists of a number of villages or sometimes smaller towns. The Ottoman nahiye, also called a bucak, was a third-level or lower administrative division, and remains as such in some successor states such as Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan, with the Balkan states of Serbia and Montenegro having preserved the term for a while after liberation for the highest administrative unit as nahija. In Tajikistan and the autonomous Chinese region of Xinjiang, both from the Turco-Persian or Turkic regions of Asia, it is a second- and third-level division, respectively. A nahiyah can constitute a division of a qadaa, mintaqah or other such district-type division and is sometimes translated as "subdistrict".

Busan (Korean: 부산; pronounced [pusan]), officially Busan Metropolitan City, is South Korea's second most populous city after Seoul, with a population of over 3.3 million as of 2024. Formerly romanized as Pusan, it is the economic, cultural and educational center of southeastern South Korea, with its port being South Korea's busiest and the sixth-busiest in the world. The surrounding "Southeastern Maritime Industrial Region" (including Ulsan, South Gyeongsang, Daegu, and part of North Gyeongsang and South Jeolla) is South Korea's largest industrial area. The large volumes of port traffic and urban population in excess of 1 million makes Busan a Large-Port metropolis using the Southampton System of Port-City classification. As of 2025, Busan Port is the primary port in Korea and the world's sixth-largest container port.

Busan is divided into 15 major administrative districts and a single county, together housing a population of approximately 3.6 million. The full metropolitan area, the Southeastern Maritime Industrial Region, has a population of approximately 8 million. The most densely built-up areas of the city are situated in a number of narrow valleys between the Nakdong and the Suyeong Rivers, with mountains separating most of the districts. The Nakdong River is Korea's longest river and Busan's Haeundae Beach is also the country's largest.

A daïra or daerah (Arabic: دائرة circle; plural dawaïr) is an administrative division in Algeria and Western Sahara in West Africa, as well as Brunei, Indonesia and Malaysia in Southeast Asia. It is commonly translated in English as "district".

Ratina is a district in the center of Tampere, Finland, on the east side of Tammerkoski. The Ratina Stadium, Tampere Bus Station and Tampere's largest shopping mall, the Ratina shopping centre, are located in the district, among others. To the north of Ratina is also the Koskikeskus shopping centre. The district consists of a peninsula called Ratinanniemi, which is surrounded on three sides by Ratinansuvanto and Viinikanlahti. Between Ratinanniemi and the Laukontori square is a pedestrian bridge called Laukonsilta, which significantly shortens travel time to the city center. The Tampere highway has good connections to the Helsinki-Tampere motorway and along it to the Tampere Ring Road, and via the Ratinansilta bridge and the Hämeenpuisto park to Highway 12. Ratinanranta is the southern part of the Tampere highway from Ratina, which used to be a recreation ground and factory area. Its new construction into a dense apartment building area of 1,000 inhabitants began in 2008, and the latest residential buildings east of the Voimakatu street are expected to be completed in 2013.

The name ratina probably dates back to the road meaning rata. Ratinanniemi, which lies between the Ratina Reservoir and Lake Pyhäjärvi's Viinikanlahti, remained uninhabited for a long time, until a few residential buildings began to rise there in the late 19th century. In 1874 a glass factory was built on the peninsula and a dozen years later two machine shops, but all these companies remained short-lived. Later, a brick factory and the city's electric power station operated in the area. The first town plan for the Ratinanniemi district was completed in 1886, according to which a total of 57 residential estates were reserved in the area, the smallest of which were for villa buildings. The plan for the eastern part of the Ratina district, with an area reserved for a new bus station, was confirmed in 1935.

Suburbs and localities are the names of geographic subdivisions in Australia, used mainly for address purposes. The term locality is used in rural areas, while the term suburb is used in urban areas. Australian postcodes closely align with the boundaries of localities and suburbs.

This Australian usage of the term "suburb" differs from common American and British usage of suburb (municipality outside of a big city). The Australian usage is closer to the American or British use of "neighbourhood" or "district", and can be used to refer to any portion of a city. Unlike the use in British or American English, this term can include inner-city, outer-metropolitan and industrial areas.

Local government is the third level of government in Australia, administered with limited autonomy under the states and territories, and in turn beneath the federal government. Local government is not mentioned in the Constitution of Australia, and two referendums in 1974 and 1988 to alter the Constitution relating to local government were unsuccessful. Every state and territory government recognises local government in its own respective constitution. Unlike the two-tier local government system in Canada or the United States, there is (largely) only one tier of local government in each Australian state/territory, with no distinction between counties and cities.

Local government in Australia is generally run by an elected council, and the area it administers is referred to by the Australian Bureau of Statistics as a local government area or LGA, each of which encompasses multiple suburbs and/or localities (roughly equivalent to neighbourhoods), often of different postcodes. LGAs are variously styled using terms such as "city", "town", "district", "municipality", "borough", "region" or "shire". These usually have geographic or historical significance, and there is rarely any legal distinction between them. For instance, cities and municipalities tend to apply to councils in urban and metropolitan areas, whereas districts and shires are found primarily in rural and regional areas. A local government area is also commonly known as a "city council", "local council", or simply a "council". Council members are generally known as councillors, and the head of a council is called the mayor, chairman or shire president. Some of Australia’s largest cities, such as Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide, use the historical title of lord mayor. Councillors are usually elected from single-member districts known as divisions or wards, whilst the mayor or president is directly elected by all the voters within that council area. However, the mayor is often entitled to style themselves as a councillor, and is considered an ex officio member of the council. As of August 2016, there were 547 local councils in Australia.

A powiat ([ˈpɔvjat]; pl. powiaty) is the second-level unit of local government and administration in Poland, equivalent to a county, district or prefecture (LAU-1 [formerly NUTS-4]) in other countries. The term "powiat" is most often translated into English as "county" or "district" (sometimes "poviat"). In historical contexts, this may be confusing because the Polish term hrabstwo (an administrative unit administered/owned by a hrabia (count) is also literally translated as "county".

A powiat is part of a larger unit, the voivodeship (Polish województwo) or province.

Desegregation busing (also known as integrated busing, forced busing, or simply busing) was a civil rights measure in the United States that came to national prominence in the 1970s. The goal of desegregation busing was to diversify the racial make-up of public schools by transporting students to more distant areas with less diverse student populations. Typically, this involved the busing of black students to schools out of district that were majority white. However, busing also occurred vice versa with the busing of white students to majority black schools.

While the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional, many American schools continued to remain racially homogeneous. In an effort to address the ongoing de facto segregation in schools, the 1971 Supreme Court decision, Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, ruled that the federal courts could use busing as a further integration tool to achieve racial balance.

An okrug is a type of administrative division in some Slavic-speaking states. The word okrug is a loanword in English, alternatively translated as area, district, county, or region.

Etymologically, okrug literally means 'circuit', derived from Proto-Slavic *okrǫgъ, in turn from *ob- "around" + *krǫgъ "circle". In meaning, the word is similar to the German term Bezirk or Kreis ('district') and the French word arrondissement; all of which refer to something "encircled" or "surrounded".

Poltava Raion (Ukrainian: Полтавський район, romanized: Poltavs'kyi raion) is a raion (district) in Poltava Oblast of central Ukraine. The raion's administrative center is the city of Poltava. Population: 582,391 (2022 estimate).

On 18 July 2020, as part of the administrative reform of Ukraine, the number of raions of Poltava Oblast was reduced to four, and the area of Poltava Raion was significantly expanded. The January 2020 estimate of the raion population was 68,174 (2020 est.).

A merger, consolidation or amalgamation, in a political or administrative sense, is the combination of two or more political or administrative entities, such as municipalities (in other words cities, towns, etc.), counties, districts, etc., into a single entity. This term is used when the process occurs within a sovereign entity.

Unbalanced growth or outward expansion of one neighbor may necessitate an administrative decision to merge (see urban sprawl). In some cases, common perception of continuity may be a factor in prompting such a process (see conurbation). Some cities (see below) that have gone through amalgamation or a similar process had several administrative sub-divisions or jurisdictions, each with a separate person in charge.