Word for an area characterized by similar stores, services, or industries

I often hear the word belt used to describe a grouping of something in a region and row used to group something in a smaller area.

If you had 50 farms across a few counties then you can say that is a farm belt. Or maybe they grow strawberries so it is the Strawberry Belt.

And then maybe you have a bunch of funeral home within a few blocks of each other. Maybe you can call it the funeral belt but more likely funeral row.


Terms such as district, area, region, street, zone, and shops prefaced by a noun that particularizes them are sometimes used as the question asks, but none of them will serve in every context. A more-general word (offered for completeness, as it probably isn't what the question requests, a better general term) is ghetto in sense 3, “An area in which people who are distinguished by sharing something other than ethnicity concentrate or are concentrated”. However, many people will miss that sense because of the dominance of senses 1 and 2, “An (often walled) area of a city in which Jews are concentrated by force and law [used] particularly of areas in medieval Italy and in Nazi-controlled Europe” and “An (often impoverished) area of a city inhabited predominantly by members of a specific nationality, ethnicity or race”.


You are looking for "zone"

"Sir, you need to go to the textile zone to find that product"

Check the geography part of this link.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone