One cause of the increasingly serious environment problem in China is residents’ improving living consumption,which not only brings waste water,garbage and other environmental negative effects directly,but also is the ultimate causation of eco-environmental stress as the one main part and the fundamental drive of social reproduction.Governments of every level in China are always setting it as a development goal to improve people’s standard of living,which may make us in a dilemma as the progress of heightening living standard probably means to occupy more resources and to worsen environment.More and more researchers pay attention to the environmental effects and resources consumption of residents’ living. In this paper,the authors research the eco-environmental stresses from urban and rural residents’ living consumption of Harbin city by applying the theory and method of ecological footprint(EF), and analyze the differences of the consumption structure and its eco-environmental effects between urban and rural residents’.The aim is to show the scientific argument for establishing a sustainable consumption style and modulating the urbanization progress. The concept of EF was advanced by the two Canadan ecological economists,William Rees and Wackernagel in 1991,and has been applied extensively to assess sustainable development,to evaluate regional ecological asset,to analyze residents’ consumption and so on.The authors calculate and analyse the EF of 6 items of living consumption (including food,clothes and other commodity,energy,water resource,dwelling house and waste) of Harbin city between 1985 and 2003.Because of the differences existing between urban and rural areas in living standard and consumption structure, the EFs of urban and rural residents are calculated respectively. The results show that the EF rose from 0.620 ha/person to 1.268 ha/person from 1985 to 2003,and exceeded the ecological capacity (1.102 ha) in 1998.The urban residents’ EF and that of rural residents’ were quite different.Urban EF was always more than rural EF and the increase rate of urban EF is more than that of rural EF.From 1985 to 2003, urban per capita EF rose from 0.765 ha to 1.614 ha with a yearly increase rate of 4.23%,while rural EF rose from 0.572 ha to 0.953 ha with a yearly increase rate of 2.88%.Each item of urban EFs was greater than rural respectively.For example,the order of urban EF in 2003 was:food(1.054)> commodity (0.201)>energy(0.200)> waste(0.134)> dwelling house(0.020)> water resource(0.006),and the order of rural EF was:food(0.711)> commodity(0.112)> waste(0.071)> energy(0.051) > dwelling house(0.006)> water resource(0.001).Urban and rural food EFs were the greatest in their EF structures,but the tendency of their percentages declined from 1985 to 2003 because the EFs ofcommodity and waste increased more rapidly.For the close relation with the food,the arable land was also increasing and the closest in the land structure.Urban per capita arable land increased from 0.544 ha to 0.947 ha,and that of rural from 0.467 ha to 0.700 ha. This research also reveals that the regional eco-environmental stress would increase with the growing quantity of per capita substantial consumption and the increasing population transferred from country to town,which would change the consumption style and lose the channel of natural treatment and disposal of waste.So we must control the progress of urbanization and make great efforts to establish a sustainable consumption style,which is characterized by moderation and environmental friendliness.