After the global financial crisis in 2008, many countries around the world have made great efforts to create a sustainable future, and green development has been seen as the most important pathway to sustainability. As a new research perspective in the area of sustainable development, green development has drawn great attention from academic researchers globally in recent years and has become interdisciplinary-oriented. As an applied basic research field for exploring the structural change of resources and environment and regional sustainable development, geography plays an essential role in the research of green development. Based on an intensive literature review, this article summarized the connotation and analytical framework of green development at first, then systematically outlined the progress of green development research from the perspective of geography and extracted seven themes, that is, the influencing factors of green development, assessment methods, spatial and temporal characteristics of green development, green development and industrial transformation, green transformation of resource-based cities, the effect of green development, and green development institutions and recommendations. Comments were made on the existing studies and shortcomings of existing research were analyzed. Finally, future research emphases were discussed, with the aim to provide references for studying green development from the perspective of geography in China.