The contribution of creativity to sustainable development involves many aspects such as ecological protection，economic development，social equity and cultural inheritance. As the first quantitative study of contribution of creativity to sustainable development，this report will focus on the economic aspect because of data availability. In 2004，UNESCO launched the Creative Cites Network（UCCN）. The network is based on the idea of achieving the sustainable development goals through creativity and cities—the spatial agglomeration of a creative economy. Therefore，this report will take member cities of UCCN as research object and analyze the relationship between the creative economy and sustainable development in these cities. This will be of important referential value for clarifying this relationship.

The UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development embraces 17 Sustainable Development Goals. This report will concentrate on decent work and economic growth. It will explore the role and impact of creativity and measure the contribution of creativity to sustainable development. The report will further analyze the relationship between creativity and sustainable economic development，based on 8 indicators related to decent work and economic growth. These indicators are output value of creative economy，regional GDP，GDP per capita，population size，the number of creative employees，overall number of employees，average salary of creative industries and average salary of all industries.

According to UNCTAD’s definition and classification，the creative economy is a broad concept. With traditional culture industries as the core，creative economy includes many other industries like R&D，professional services and cultural products production. In this paper，the definition of creative economy bases on UNCTAD’s classification，and there will be some adjustments considering statistical classification of different countries and regions. Generally，data on creative economy include three parts，namely culture，sports and entertainment，scientific research and technical services，information transmission，software and information technology services. Industries which included in UNCTAD’s classification，such as related legal services or tools production，are not counted here，because it is difficult to separate them from service and manufacturing industries. Compared with common classification of culture and related industries in China，such classification accommodates more activities related to knowledge economy within the category of research and development. The data of each city are mainly from official statistics of governments at all levels，with some from research institutions or non-governmental organizations associated with the creative economy.

Taking into account factors such as creative fields（according to the classification of UCCN），geographical distribution，importance of the city and data availability，the report involves 30 key Creative Cities，including 13 Chinese Creative Cities，4 Cities in other Asian countries，7 European Cities，2 North American Cities and 4 Australian Cities. Due to the actual difficulties of cross-national data-collection and cross-linguistic literature research，non-Chinese and non-English data are less accessible at our present stage. Therefore，only non-English Cities with adequate English data are included in this report，the number of which is respectively limited. From the perspective of creative fields，among these 30 Cities，there are 10 Cities of Design，5 Cities of Literature，4 Cities of Gastronomy，3 Cities of Film，3 Cities of Music，3 Cities of Media Arts and 2 Cities of Crafts and Folk Art. Most Cities of Design are large cities，even national or regional capitals. It is easier to collect data on such Cities. Therefore，in this report the number of Cities of Design is the largest. The analysis of the creative economy consists of three dimensions，that is economic growth，creating jobs and salary level. Due to statistical discrepancies，the analysis of the above three dimensions involves different cities. When exploring the contribution of creativity to economic growth，the report mainly focuses on 19 Cities，such as Beijing，Nagoya，Montreal，Sydney and Edinburgh. When it comes to creating jobs，this report analyzes 26 Cities，including Seattle，Melbourne，Bangkok，Helsinki，Adelaide，etc. As for salary level，15 Cities including Seattle，Macao，Nanjing，Prague and Wuhan，etc.，are taken as examples.