In recent decades, accelerated economic development and rapid urbanization of urban areas globally have emerged huge environmental challenges of the 21st century that require both new analytic approaches and new sources of data and information. The availability of satellite remote sensing data has increased significantly in the last two decades, and these data constitute a useful data source for mapping the composition of urban settings and analyzing changes over time. Most importantly, remote sensing can play a key role in providing information on urbanization to help science and policy making. Urban remote sensing is a significant field of remote sensing applications, which has become one of the important aspects in geography, ecology, urban planning and other disciplines. Urbanization not only changes the population and economy, but also changes the originally ecological environment of the city, which causes a series of urban ecological environment problems. Urban remote sensing has been used and applied by many fields in urban studies and is an interdisciplinary research field which has progressed and made great advancement in recent years. In the stage of the country's new type urbanization planning, ecological civilization and smart city construction, urban remote sensing faces new opportunities and challenges. Based on the researches of urban remote sensing in this paper, we reviewed the theory, methodology, and application of urban surface temperature, urban boundary expansion, urban impervious surfaces, urban landscape pattern, and urban ecological security. This paper discusses the dynamics and trends of these five aspects in the last two decades. The main conclusions are as follows:Firstly, the data sources have changed from single remote sensing data to multi-source remote sensing data. In particular, the combination of high-resolution data is increasingly used in various fields of urban research; Secondly, the research objectives of urban remote sensing continue to expand, deepen, and become more focused; Thirdly, urban remote sensing research has begun to expand from two-dimensional to three-dimensional spatial analysis; and Fourthly, the contexts involved in urban remote sensing interaction and affected each other. Based on an in-depth understanding of the theoretical significance and potential challenges of urban remote sensing research, the paper provides a comprehensive background for future studies in the area. The paper also provides some information and future research challenges in urban ecological environment problems. The future study of urban areas using remote sensing should focus more on the urban form and composition, key urban elements, ecological environment response, ecological environment assessment, and urban expansion and urban environmental prediction. This study provides the background information, trend, and challenges of the future study of urban remote sensing research. Challenges include greater demands, richer datum, more advanced methods, more comprehensive information, more elaborate expressions, and a wider range of goals.