District (Meaning and Explanation)

We explain what a district is and what its function is. Also, what types of districts exist and the characteristics of each one.

A map of Madrid indicates the districts and other administrative divisions. — Districts serve to organize the tasks of public administration.

What is a district?

a district It is a political-administrative delimitation of the territory of a city or a town which serves to geographically organize the exercise of public functions and public administration tasks. For example, the province of Buenos Aires, in Argentina, is made up of 135 different districts.

The term district comes from the Latin word districtsmade up in turn of the voices dis (separation or intensity) and strictus (tight, tied tightly). Hence it can be understood as something that is not separate, that is, something that must be understood as an organized whole.

Although the existence of districts is common to many countries and cities in the world, they do not always have the same rank or value, so in reality The exact meaning of the term depends on your national context. Depending on the case, a city can be divided into districts that are then divided into smaller units (such as communes or municipalities), or it can, on the contrary, be divided first into communes and then into districts. Therefore, there is no universal definition for districts.

In fact, we can talk about different types of districts, such as:

Capital districts. Those in which the capital of a country resides, generally too large to be understood as a single city. For example: the American Capital District (Washington, DC) is the municipality where the capital of this country is located.
Federal districts. Those where the capital of a federation is located, and which, therefore, do not belong to a federated state, but to the entire country. For example: the Federal District (known as “DF”) is the political-administrative delimitation of the Mexican capital, that is, where Mexico City is located.
School districts. Those in which the school circuit of a city is distributed, that is, the division of a city based on its schools and pedagogical institutes. For example: the city of Buenos Aires has 21 different school districts, and each one groups together schools from different neighborhoods.
Electoral districts. Those in which the voting population of a country is organized, in such a way that each person is assigned a specific place to go to vote when there are elections. For example: Iceland's voting population is organized into five electoral districts, which are northwest, northeast, south, southwest and Reykjavik.
Municipal districts. Those into which the same city is administratively subdivided, also called municipalities. They obey the organization of public administrative functions. For example: the city of Caracas, capital of Venezuela, is subdivided into five municipal districts: Libertador, Baruta, Chacao, El Hatillo and Sucre.