Abstract:

The traditional economic growth theory considered that the main driving factors of economic growth were material elements such as labor, land, but lacked attention to the innovative elements like talent, technology and so on. While, In the era of the knowledge-based economy, the research on innovative city is booming and a series of theoretical achievement has been produced. Some conceptual systems, such as “National Innovation System”, “Regional Innovation System” had been put forward since the 1980s and deeply explored into the urban research during the subsequent studies, which brought a series of theoretical achievements related to innovative cities. Based on this, this article makes a literature review which focuses on the research of innovative city in recent years. Firstly, the article starts with the innovation theory proposed by Joseph Schumpeter, tracing back the theoretical source. Secondly, it makes a review on the main content of “Innovative City” involving the proposition and connotation, inscape and condition, developing type and pattern and so on, and on this basis, the theoretical evolution process of innovative city has been cleared up. That is the innovative city is an important part of the innovative country, and the city innovation system is a subsystem of the national innovation system. Therefore, the research on the innovative city is a further inheritance and development of national and regional innovation system theory in the level of city space. Then, the article makes introspection on the weak appoints of the present research on innovative city, in which the research on innovative city has fallen into as well as the lack of concern on the exogenous power source for city innovation. Aiming at the above problems, it can be clearly indicated that the further studies on innovative city cannot be limited to the construction of index system and the city rank according to their innovative performance. It should deeply step into the inner city based on those studies, and build an innovative system with a distinctive characteristic together with the most suitable constructional path and scheme by the dynamic analysis of some specific aspects of a city, which can bridge the “innovation” and “city”, such as the spatial environment, industrial structure, cultural connotation, development history and so on. Finally, the article points out the major breakout direction for the research and practice on innovative city in future as follows: the first is the individual road selection to setting up an innovative city, the second is that how to use the international innovative resource effectively to help building an innovative city. The above views not only exert a significant impact on the construction of innovative cities in developing countries and regions, but also is applicative in developed counties and regions.

Key words: innovative city, theoretically tracing back, evolution process, theoretical introspection