Abstract:Resource-based cities are important strategic bases for energy resources in China, and their development and transformation issues have been widely concerned for a long time.Since the end of the 1990s, the research on resource-based cities has experienced three stages: exploration period, surge period and volatile-decline period.The research areas have gradually shifted from economic issues to other fields such as society and ecology. Combined with the development of resource-based cities, it mainly studies the relationship between resource curse and resource-based cities economic growth, resource-based cities transformation and sustainable development, all of which have distinct economic and policy orientation. In order to solve the outstanding problems that resource-based cities may face, it is expected that the relationship between resource curse and resource-based cities economic growth, and the choice of resource-based cities transformation will become the new research focus and core content.