Abstract: With the development of new generation technology and the further in-depth of urban sustainability with low-carbon concept, the smart low-carbon city, which combines green eco-urban development and low-carbon efficiency with smart convenience, is becoming one of the hotspots and research frontiers in the field of healthy urban sustainable development. At present, studies on smart low-carbon city have already started, leading to some progress. However, the most critical and fundamental issues as the driving factors and dynamic mechanisms are rarely involved in existing studies. Therefore, based on the current development features of such cities, this paper took a theoretical and qualitative analysis of the dynamic mechanisms of smart low-carbon city to get a profound understanding of the development process and characteristics of smart low-carbon city and choose optimal ways for urban construction. Results show as follows:(1) the interaction of science and technology innovation and low-carbon economy is the internal core driving force;the environmental change and resource depletion pressure are the inherent fundamental driving forces;the economic and financial development and industrial structure growth are the internal foundations.(2) The optimization and upgrading of urban functions and development transformation are the external preconditions;the high quality human capital and adequate financing capital are the key external driving forces;the social cultural environment and institutional reform and innovation are the important external supports.(3) With the coaction of all the internal and external elements, the dynamic mechanism of smart low-carbon city grows up into a continuous and comprehensive systematic chain, which determines the development state, speed, level and evolution direction of smart low-carbon city. Overall, the precise research on the development of smart low-carbon city is still in its early infancy, particularly the research on the factors affecting the development, the interaction mechanisms among these factors, the typical development patterns and a comprehensive measurement evaluation, showing that a complete theoretical system of smart low-carbon city is far away from established. Therefore, due to these shortcomings, this paper explored the factors and interaction mechanisms of the smart low-carbon city development from the overall systemic perspective of view based on multidisciplinary, and tried to start from the theoretical logic to reveal the formation, the evolution and the development of smart low-carbon city, which could be an opportunity for related research to expand their view and further relevant studies in-depth and fill research blanks in this field. Meanwhile, the theoretical discussion and analysis in this paper will provide some useful ideas and lay the foundation for the quantitative research on dynamic evolution mechanism of smart low-carbon city development.

Key words: smart low-carbon, urban development, dynamic mechanism, qualitative research