An oasis city is the area of arid land most sensitive to the effects of human activities. Land resources are the crucial factors in the regional development of the oasis area. The man-land relationship is more complex during the process of urbanization because of the limitation and vulnerability of oasis land resources. Whether the land use benefit constantly improves with the urban development is one of the key problems in the urbanization of arid areas. This paper examines the spatial patterns of land use benefits and urbanization and their interactions in Xinjiang Province in China. In order to do so, we draw on data associated with efficiency of land use and urbanization for the years 1995, 2000, 2005 and 2008. The paper investigates the extent to which the agglomeration of population and economic activities varies geographically and interplays with spatial patterns of resource efficiency through computation of Global Moran's I index, Getis-Ord Gi^* index and a coordinated development model. The method used provides clear evidence that urbanization and land resource efficiency have uneven spatial patterns due to oasis distribution and the initial phase of urban development. More specifically, the paper concludes firstly that the urbanization and land resource efficiency of counties in Xinjiang appear to show spatial agglomeration. Two hot spots were concentrated mainly on the northern slope of the Tianshan Mountain and the counties along the southern Xinjiang railway. The levels of social and economic development and city construction in Xinjiang are highest in these two areas. The scale of oasis cities is generally small and based on oasis agriculture. The dominant patterns of regional city development in states in Xinjiang are currently either cities with a central hub or those developed along the traffic routes. The irregular patterns of regional development influence the agglomeration of urbanization and land use. The second conclusion is that oasis cities are obviously restricted in external contact with other cities owing to the closed nature of the oasis system. Once the center-peripheral mode of urbanization and land use has been formed, it is difficult to change it in the short term. Coordination between urbanization and land resource efficiency showed a "spindle" structure as a whole, suggesting a relatively stable Matthew Effect in which the strong get stronger and the weak get weaker. Areas in the northern and southern parts of Xinjiang have demonstrated different trajectories of development. The third conclusion is that by classifying the counties of Xinjiang into five categories of coordination between urbanization and land efficiency (areas with simultaneous coordination, urbanization-lagging, land efficiency-lagging, gradual adjusting and low level of coordination), very few of the urban areas in the study have shown simultaneous coordination, whereas there are relatively similar numbers of urban areas with other types of coordination.