With cities experiencing rapid development,the central business district (CBD) comes into focus. The current challenge of climate change makes the concept of low-carbon development business districts crucial for sustainable development. Thus,this paper begins by exploring the evolution of CBD from the traditional CBD to the ecological CBD. The concept of "low-carbon CBD" has gradually developed into a core pillar of sustainable development of business districts,the profound connotation of low-carbon CBD is the higher carbon productivity and persistent low-carbon behavior during the life cycle development of CBD. This research,through the analysis of the characteristics of carbon emissions,further shows that low-carbon CBD construction has great potential to contribute to this trend. The low-carbon CBD" development pathway needs to apply the low-carbon concept of planning, design, construction and operation stages,which is based on the whole life cycle analysis (LCA) of low-carbon development. Finally,suggestions of goal-setting, policy-making and implementation-management are put forth on sustainable development of low-carbon CBD in the future.