I donot understand this setting, I thihk it is normal that the system and colonies counted in SIZE, but the Districts also counted?
The empire size....
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they could have used population as a 3rd metric (on top of systems and colonies), but districts fulfill a similar purpose (making big important planets count more than new / small colonies with low pop) and you have more control over districts since you build them manually.
It means that new colonies in of itself are not especially punishing. That's a very good thing. It's really developed planets that increase the administrative capacity. But with more development you are also compensating for its effects.
Have you ever looked at what your capital provides for the colony? It's basically its own powerful district
It's counting systems because otherwise your borders could stretch to infinity without balancing factors.
It's counting colonies, because that way larger planets are more efficient (10 size planet = 12 size cost. 20 size planet = 22 size cost) and more desirable. Albeit it's a very minor% in first place.
They could not do this because robots would count against this, which would unreasonably punish mechanists in the size department. Hilariously, this doesn't stop them from counting toward building slot unlocks.
Anyways, to answer the OP, yeah districts counting toward size is going to feel very weird. After all you already own the entire planet, why would owning more space on the planet increase size?!? Strictly speaking they did this because districts are the primary source of revenue or an indirect (by providing more housing for buildings which provide resources). Historically they used population since everyone used the same amount of pops, but this became problematic when introducing the new robot mechanics (see above) and also things like hiveminds since those will have vastly more pops for not necessarily more income. Districts fullfill a kinda-similar purpose of penalizing you for more pops. Note that hiveminds, the most likely to have more pops than districts, have "unemployment" jobs for their pops.
This isn't really a perfect system mind you. Any pops you milk (livestock) or use as batteries doesn't require a single district on the planet: just a bunch of paradise domes. So that's 2 empire size for a planet with an absolutely monumental amount of food production and living space, and you can also use it to emmigration grow other planets faster. But I can't think of a better system since if empire size increase was based on planet size, you'd be punished massively every time you built a colony (before it helped to fix the problem), rather than it slowly growing as you develop the planet.
Pre 2.2. small planets where extremely inferior and there really was no way to ever bother with them. Now, that has changed. Large planets are still better, but the difference has strongly decreased and that is one of the best balance things they have achieved in 2.2.
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If I were going to change anything about empire size mechanics, I'd change counting systems to counting each mining/research station at 1/4 of a size point. That way I wouldn't feel as bad about taking crappy systems just to round out my borders.