Cities are the main regions of fossil energy consumption and CO₂ emissions. Analysis of characteristics of the CO₂ emissions from fossil energy consumption in typical cities, and clarification of the dynamics and critical influencing factors of the CO₂ emissions in different cities could provide important scientific basis for CO₂ mitigation action in urban areas. With the IPCC recommended methods and China-specific emission parameters, the CO₂ emissions from fossil fuel combustion were estimated in 11 typical cities from 2006 to 2015. Based on the emission characters and economic development, the 11 cities are categorized into four groups, namely, cities with highly developed economy (including Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou), cities with high carbon emission (including Chongqing, Urumqi and Tangshan), cities with low emission and low economic growth (including Harbin, Hohhot and Daqing), and the cities with low emission but high economic growth (including Guiyang and Hefei). Then the urban CO₂ emissions were decomposed by Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index (LMDI) method to compare the differences of influencing factors among the above four categories of cities. The results indicated that CO₂ emissions from most cities increased during the study period, while the CO₂ emissions of Beijing and Guangzhou showed a decreasing trend. The emissions from the industrial sector took the dominant position in both of the total emissions from the cities and their dynamics. The per capita CO₂ emissions of different cities showed a similar variation pattern to that of the total CO₂ emissions. Cities with highly developed economy had the lowest CO₂ emissions intensity (avg. 0.088t CO₂/k Yuan), and the values went gradually higher for cities with low emission and low economic growth (avg. 0.282t CO₂/k Yuan), cities with low emission but high economic growth (avg. 0.305t CO₂/k Yuan), and cities with high carbon emission (avg. 0.662t CO₂/k Yuan). For all the 4 categories of cities, both economic development and population size enlargement could lead to CO₂ emissions increment, but economic development made the major contribution while the effects of population size were relatively small. Meanwhile, the decrease of energy intensity effect acted as the main driving factor of CO₂ emissions reduction, and this reduction effect is stronger in cities with highly developed economy or with high carbon emission than those in the rest two categories of cities. The effect of industrial structure promotion restrained CO₂ emissions in 6 cities where the average annual growth rate of the tertiary industry GDP was higher than the secondary industry. The energy structure effect only inhibits the CO₂ emissions of Beijing and Guangzhou (with the accumulative contribution at -21.73Mt and -0.03Mt, respectively), where coal's proportion in fossil energy consumption was low and going down fast. While in the cities with high carbon emission, the change of energy structure has the most obvious promoting effect on the CO₂ emissions.