Establishment of Evaluation Index for Creative Cities: Application in Chengdu, China

Cities, as important spatial carriers for economic development, are being reshaped by the rapidly growing of knowledge economy. Creative cities have emerged, which became a trend of urban transformation. By reviewing studies of evaluating the creative cities at home and abroad, this research proposes an evaluation index to measure the importance of different indicators in constructing creative city. The index contains 3 first-level indicators and 16 second-level factors. The expert scoring method and the analytic hierarchy process are used to weight the indicator. The results show that the creative environment, especially the economic condition has the greatest impact on the creative city development. Then this study takes Chengdu as an example to implement the established evaluation index with its 2015–2017 statistical data. Based on the quantitative analysis result, this paper proposes several policy recommendations for creative city practice, especially in the less developed regions. The findings can also provide a reference to the other local governments in the way of constructing creative city.