Abstract: Great achievements have been made in the construction of characteristic towns in Jiangsu, which has been actively promoted by governments at all levels. The construction of characteristic towns has taken shape with solid industrial foundation and rich types. But there are problems. For example, some leading industries are not integrated enough, it is difficult to incubate innovative ideas, lack of input of elements, and lack of cultural excavation. Some cadres do not have a good understanding of building characteristic towns and lack of self-consciousness for long-term development. The sustainable development path of characteristic towns is analyzed from the aspects of selection and cultivation of characteristic industries, construction of industrial format system and spatial layout, cultural inheritance and feature planning, and system and mechanism innovation.

Key words: characteristic town, practice, sustainable development, Jiangsu province