Abstract: Coordinating land use and economic development plays an important role in achieving sustainable urban development. Based on panel data of 25 prefecture-level cities in Huaihe Eco-Economic Zone from 2006 to 2020, this study introduced a decoupling index model to examine coupling relationship between urban land expansion and economic growth in time and space dimensions. Results show that the decoupling relationship is generally characterized by four states: strong decoupling, weak decoupling, growth linkage and negative decoupling, with weak decoupling being the main one. In past two years, decoupling  of cities showed a weak trend, but towards a strong decoupling and negative decoupling. Based on measurement results, 25 cities are classified into three types of decoupling: ideal decoupling, average decoupling and undesirable decoupling. Based on above analysis, it is suggested that cities persist in promoting industrial transformation and upgrading, reasonably defining urban boundaries, accelerating the process of urbanization of population and continuously reducing the dependence on land finance.