Abstract:The sustainable development of the resource-based cities has long been a hot issue in the field of economic geography. These cities provide an important support for raw material and energy during the industrialization and urbanization process of China. With the gradual decay of resources and other reasons, many contradictions and problems accumulated in the development process appeared and these cities are becoming a kind of“problem area”in China's building a moderately prosperous society. Since 2008, 69 resource-exhausted cities have been selected as transition pilot and financial support was given to them from central government. Based on field research in resourceexhausted cities, we find that changes in the macroeconomic environment makes an increased development volatility of the city, the pace of urban transformation in Northeast is significantly slow, independent mining areas and forestry-based cities are the most difficult areas in transition. Using panel data model to measure the resource-exhausted cities in transition, we find that re-employment promotion activities, the state's financial and policy support and renovation of shanty towns are key reasons to promote the transformation work. But some issues can block the transformation work's effective procession. These issues are low match of re-training system and industrial development, deviation between local funding and state funding oriented direction, mismatch among renovation of shanty towns and residents ability, etc.. Some policy suggestions are thereby put forward to improve transformation of resource-exhausted cities in the future. The most important ones are increasing central financial support, improving alternative industries support policies, promoting the comprehensive management of mining subsidence area, the establishment of resource-exhausted cities' shantytowns fund, etc..