In the water distribution network (WDN), although the water demand of the node is changing constantly, the water quantity and water pressure of the node need to be met at each moment. To realize energy saving and consumption reduction, it is proposed to control the nodal water head of WDN in an appropriate narrow range. The frequent large fluctuation of the water demand, which may lead the water pressure exceed the expected range, increases the difficulty of the zone control. To realize optimized WND control, a novel zone predictive control is proposed, where two switching cases are considered. The switching condition is whether there are feasible solutions to keep the pressure within the expected region over the prediction horizon. When the condition is satisfied, the controller minimizes the variation of inputs with constraints of pressure range for ensuring the tank level staying within the expected zone and obtaining optimal economic cost. When the current pressure is out of the expected region or the condition is not satisfied due to the large variation of water demand, a reference trajectory of outputs is introduced, which is combined with the inputs as an optimization variable, and the constraints of expected zone are moved from the output to the introduced reference trajectory. Through minimizing the distance between reference trajectory and output, the controller will keep the tank level from deviating too far from the expected zone and will drive the tank level rapidly into the expected zone once the tank level exceeds the expected range. An application of the proposed zone MPC to WDN in Shinan District of Shanghai is given to illustrate its effectiveness.