Ma, XiaojiaoWang, Weiqiang2023-07-302023-07-302019978-88-99243-93-7https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14235/459In the 21st century, under the wave of globalization, society is entering an economic development model with knowledge and creativity as its capital. Against global convergence, playing local characteristics of the city itself is the key to improving the city's competitiveness. This model of creating a city image with creative economy and stimulating economic development through creative industries has adapted to the requirements of post-industrial society for urban transformation. Therefore, it has been strongly supported and promoted by many governments, and has rapidly swept the world – “creative city” has gradually become a new paradigm for urban development. Based on the data of the Shanghai Statistical Yearbook for the past ten years, this paper visualizes creative investment, creative achievements and creative workers at the creative economy level, and hierarchy structure, proportion and salary at the creative class level, and creative immigrants, homosexual index and creative ideas at the creative city level. Thereby it analyzes the development trend of Shanghai as a creative city at various levels in the past ten years, and summarizes the advantages and disadvantages of its development. This paper found the advantages are that the national level has a large investment in research and development in Shanghai, a large number of patents granted, a rapid development of creative industries, and a leading index of creativity across the country (except Beijing). The shortcoming is that the number and proportion of the creative class is not big enough. At the same time, Shanghai as an international metropolis, the openness, inclusiveness and diversity of the city are far from enough. In these respects, we analyzes the creative city—Helsinki's successful experience, meant to guide Shanghai's future development strategy and transformation as a creative city.encreative economycreative citycreative classurban cultureArticle3287-3298