Xinjiang is the core area of the Silk Road Economic Belt. As an important area of China-Pakistan Economic Corridor and Central Asian channel, its new-type urbanization construction and ecological environment are facing new challenges and problems. The main scientific issue in sustainable development ecology is how to coordinate the coupling relationship between urbanization and ecosystem in the core area. Based on domestic and international studies, we systematically summarized the characteristics of urbanization and ecological environment in the core area of the Silk Road Economic Belt, and the coupling relationships among urbanization and water, soil, gas, carbon, and other factors were analysed. The results showed that the level of urbanization was higher than the quality of urbanization in the core area, and the development coordination degree tended to increase with obvious spatial differentiation. The ecological environment showed poor background, high sensitivity, and low bearing capacity. Moreover, the coupling pattern between the two systems reflected running-in and antagonistic mode, and the coordination degree changes from imbalance to coordination. At present, The coupling law of urbanization and ecological environment in the core area has been recognized, but it still needs further study. The future research priorities include:establishing database of the coupling relationship between urbanization and ecosystems, focus on the coupling effect between urbanization and ecological environment system, carrying out research on the thresholds of various factor in urbanization and ecoenvironmental system, and strengthening the early-warning system research on urbanization and ecoenvironmental issues.