Chen, Liang-Chih and Shiuh-Shen Chien (2017) Industrial Districts. In D. Richardson, N. Castree, M. Goodchild, A. Kobayashi, W. Liu and R. Marston (Eds), The International Encyclopedia of Geography: People, the Earth, Environment, and Technology. Wiley.
An industrial district (ID) is a spatially defined production system characterized by the concentration of firms specializing in certain industrial sectors. In addition to the typical notion of agglomeration economies, the ID concept stresses the significance of noneconomic factors, such as culture, norms, and institutions, to account for a region's industrial and economic development. The existence of strong local social networks built on a common culture of trust is regarded as a particularly important and distinctive characteristic of IDs.