Investigating the transformation rules and spatial heterogeneous driving mechanisms of the "production-living-ecological" spaces under the rapid urbanization process is an important basis for the greening transformation of production and life style in the lake area and the high-quality development of territorial spatial planning. It is important for the optimal allocation of national land resources and construction of ecosystem resilience. Based on Landsat remote sensing images of land cover from 1980 to 2020, we analyzed the spatial pattern of the transformation of the "production-living-ecological" spaces in Poyang Lake region from the perspective of spatial structure-distribution pattern-spatial function. The study also quantitatively identified the spatial heterogeneity mechanisms of the transformation pattern in the lake area, areas near-lake area, and areas far-lake area. The results showed that: (1) the transformation of the spatial pattern of "production-living-ecological" in Poyang Lake area had significantly spatial dynamic heterogeneity in past 40 years. The production space continued to focus on the lakeshore and the plain area along the river, the living space spread and concentrated in the built-up areas of cities, and the ecological space existed in the lake area and the mountainous hilly area at the periphery. (2) The structure dominated by ecological space has not changed. However, ecological space continued to be diminished by the encroachment of production and living space, highlighted by the encroachment of large-scale watershed and woodland ecological space by agricultural, industrial, mining production, and urban construction space. (3) The transition of the functional index continued to show a gradient change from the lake area to the far-lake area, confirming the existence of the "lake effect" phenomenon in the transformation of the three spatial functions. (4) Urbanization and industrialization were the key driving factors for the transformation of the "production-living-ecological" spaces in the lake-ring and near-lake areas, while urbanization and agricultural modernization dominated the transformation of the "production-living-ecological" spaces in the far-lake areas. The subdivision factors such as urban population concentration, economic growth, industrial economic scale growth, and agricultural machinery use level have shaped the transformation mechanism of "production-living-ecological" spaces of different geographical differentiation in Poyang Lake area through different scenario combinations. Our results provide a new perspective for understanding the unique territorial spatial evolution of the lake area and the evolutionary mechanism that varies from place to place, as well as new insights for building a modernized territorial spatial planning system and a new ecological civilization pattern of production-life-ecology synergy.