District gets hard capital upfront (6)
I believe the answer is:
parish
'district' is the definition.
(parish is a kind of district)
'hard capital upfront' is the wordplay.
'hard' becomes 'h'.
'capital' becomes 'paris' (Paris is the capital of France).
'upfront' says to put letters next to each other (some letters go in front of others).
'h' put after 'paris' is 'PARISH'.
'gets' acts as a link.
(Other definitions for parish that I've seen before include "Area within diocese with own church" , "Unit of local government" , "administrative district" , "quarter" , "Administrative area within a diocese" .)