Urbanization is a typical feature of socio-economic development.According to the sta-tistics,from 1980 to 2001,China's urbanization level rose from 17.92% to 37.66%.Urbanization has many positive effects such as organizing mass production,improving the progress of sci-technology and education,enhancing people's living standard and so on.However,some negative effects of urbanization have been emerging especially its ecological and environmental effects. Along with the process of urbanization,lots of people migrate from countryside to city.The increase of urban residents and the change of living style increase the consumption of natural resources and natural ecosystems.So,the quantitative analysis of urban residents' living consum-ption and its appropriation to natural ecosystems can demonstrate the influences of urbanization and sustainable development in urban areas. As a new method for quantitatively measuring natural resources used by humans,ecological footprint can illustrate regional sustainable development through the analysis of energy and other resources consumption.In this paper,taking Taizhou in Jiangsu Province of East China,Shangqiu in Henan Province of Central China,Tongchuan of Shaanxi Province of Northwest China and a typical resource city,and Xilin Gol of Inner Mongolia of North China and pastoral area as examples,ecological footprints of residents'living consumption were calculated and compared. The results show that (1) about 90% of ecological footprints in Taizhou,Shangqiu and Tongchuan come from the consumption of eating and wearing but below 70% in Xilin Gol where living ener-gy consumption occupies relatively high proportion;(2)for the sake of different geographical areas,residents have different consumption styles which cause different ecosystem appropriation, e.g. per capita residents living in Xilin Gol (pastoral area) occupy 0.333hm2 of grassland ecosystem which is several times that of in other cities,residents living in Taizhou (the Yangtze valley area) occupy 0.116hm2 of water ecosystem which is two or more times in other cities;and (3)compared to the bio-productive area,the ecological footprints of city residents in Shangqiu,Taizhou and Tongchuan are all more than the whole city's ecological capacity which approves that city is one of the typical kind of ecological deficit areas.Therefore,how to effectively adjust urban residents' consumption style and structure is very significant to improve sustainable development in urban areas.