Combing the development mode of sponge cities in various countries, using Citespace to analyze the research literature of sponge cities, drawing the scientific knowledge map of literature quantity, research authors, research institutions and research keywords. The results show that the construction and research of sponge city has entered the normalization stage. The number of literature increases first and then slows down, and the research authors and institutions are scattered. The key words of literature are sponge city, low impact development, rainwater utilization, etc. The research hot-spots are landscape architecture, urbanization, green infrastructure, especially the new direction of green infrastructure construction, which needs to be focused on.