Abstract: As a special urban type, seaport cities have aroused wide concern from academic communities at home and abroad since the 1960s. Nowadays, there are plenty of academic outputs in this field, which are classified into several research topics such as port-city relationship, port development and evolution, integrated planning of port and city, and spatial structure of port cities. Although several scholars reviewed some subjects in this field recently, there is not a complete literature review of seaport city studies. This paper collected academic works related in recent more than 50 years, sorted them out in term of study topics firstly, and then summed up, analyzed and compared these subjects to show the research context and to find study shortages and future directions in this field. After reviewing, we can draw the following conclusions. Firstly, the attention to seaport cities is increasing worldwide, but it lacks coherence at home. Secondly, research perspective has transferred from port-city evolution to port-city relationship, but the latter is relatively confined at home. Thirdly, the study method has changed from qualitative to quantitative analysis, but still lacks interdisciplinary approach. Fourthly, spatial analysis is an essential method all the time, and scale and indicators shall be supplemented in the future study. Finally, there are many studies in this field that focus on evolution process and status of seaport cities, but there are relatively few studies on theories and their applications to newly built seaport cities.

Key words: development and evolution of port, port-city relationship, seaport cities