Indonesian government has established regional planning boards at the provincial and district level in the mid-1970s and early 1980s. The boards’ tasks encompass, among other, to supervise and coordinate development planning efforts in their area. Planning regions in Indonesia thus are delimitated on basis of administrative criteria. These regions may show a considerable internal differentiation in both agro-physical and socio-economic conditions. As a result of various factors, this potentially heterogeneous nature of the planning regions does not seem to receive attention required for area problem-oriented planning. In this article, methodological considerations dealing with intra-regional differentiation at the district level are presented. Moreover, an example will be used to show that even in a relatively small district widely varying socio-economic conditions can be observed.