The relationship of urbanization and ecological environment has become an important research field in the study of regional human-environment system. Based on the data of research topics related to urbanization and ecological environment retrieved from Web of Science (WoS) and China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) databases from 1999 to 2016 and using Excel, SPSS, and CiteSpace software, this study drew the visual knowledge maps based on co-occurrence analysis, co-citation analysis, detection of burst terms, keywords cooccurrence analysis, and multidimensional scaling analysis. (1) The research frontiers gradually moved from the relationship between urbanization and single factors of the ecological environment system to the comprehensive research of multi- factors, and shifted from single effect to interactions within and between systems. (2) Under the background of rapid urbanization, land use change, ecosystem services, climate change, landscape patterns, and eco-environmental effects have become the focus of recent research. (3) There is a lack of interdisciplinary research on the use of integrated methods of new technologies in a multi-scale perspective. Finally, we present the prospects of future study, which include research on the patterns-processes-mechanism of the relationship of urbanization and ecological environment, transregional multi- scale research, environmental effect of urbanization and influencing factors, formation and regulation of ecological environment problems in the process of rapid urbanization, and sustainable development of urbanization and ecological environment. These prospects and reviews would help to offer revelation and reference for relevant research in China.