Every zone is free to divide itself up any way it sees fit.
Different TLD's use different strategies.
Some are broken down geographically (Canada does it this way); some are broken down by type (the UK uses this
method: commercial, educational, etc.); some are not broken down by any regular scheme (Japan).
Aditionally, the domain being subdomained may (or may not)
place any arbitrary order on the subdivision. These
restrictions are purely arbitrary and have no relation to
the DNS process.