At present, the era of high-quality development driven by quality of place in areas has come in China, based on the spatial panel data of 284 prefecture level and above cities in China from 2009 to 2016, this paper empirically analyzes the direct impact of quality of place on regional innovation capacity, spillover effects and spatial differences.The results show that the improvement of quality of place not only significantly promotes the innovation development of the region, but also has a significant spatial spillover effect on the surrounding areas, and the driving mechanism of quality of place on regional innovation is more likely to be transmitted through population flow, especially human capital migration.The impact of quality of place on regional innovation will increase with the improvement of urban wage level, development stage, human capital scale and accessibility.From the perspective of innovation driving force for local and surrounding areas, the innovation driving force of personal consumption service and regional health environment in quality of place is stronger, while the regional public service does not show significant innovation driving force for local and surrounding areas.In the future, China’s urbanization development should strengthen the development strategy of promoting urban transformation with quality of place, in the selection of pilot cities, we should focus on the “edge cities” with better ecological environment and urban service conditions, such as the gathering cities of colleges and universities, the transportation hub cities, and the Metropolitan area. The local government should pay attention to the combination of “point” and “face”, and the spatial linkage of quality of place construction.