The construction of human settlement has become an emerging issue in urban development and ecology in China. Using material metabolism to analyze urban human settlement and improve ecological civilization during the urbanization has become an important way to promote modern urbanization development. By reviewing the urban studies from the perspectives of human settlement and social metabolism, we propose that these two perspectives are complementary regarding their respective theories and methodologies, and the combination of them will provide a holistic understanding of urban ecology. Using theories of landscape ecology, we construct a multi-level and multi-dimensional paradigm and framework to study the metabolisms of urban human settlements. This paradigm can reflect the process characteristics of urban human settlement metabolism from multiple scales and dimensions; clarify the correlations between anthropogenic activities and the resource and environmental issues; integrate multi-disciplinary knowledge and technologies; analyze the spatiotemporal variations in urban human settlements and the driving factors; and thus favor the knowledge advances for urban human settlements. The landscape ecology-based framework can effectively identify the pattern-process-scale coupling problems in the metabolisms of urban human settlements, provide tools for data collection, storage and analysis, impact control, and process management. The paradigm and framework provide a valuable reference in methodology improvement of urban metabolism and future construction of urban human settlements.