Abstract: As a key link in the comprehensive governance and development of China’s major river basins, it is of great significance to explore the coordination between tourism industry and urban human settlement environment in the Yangtze River Economic Belt for the sustainable development of the two systems. By investigating 108 prefectural-level cities along the Yangtze River Economic Belt, this paper constructs the coupling coordination index system between the tourism industry and urban human settlement environment, evaluating the evolution trends of its coupling coordination from the two perspectives of geography and time-interspace, and exploring the interactive responsive relationship between the two systems using PVAR model, the essay reaches three main conclusions as below:(1) The evaluation indexes of tourism industry and urban human settlement environment in prefecture-level cities of the Yangtze Economic Belt show significant spatial disequilibrium. High-evaluation regions tend to be distributed in an agglomeration trend and focus on core cities within each region while low-evaluation regions tend to be distributed in a decentralization trend and focus on the middle west area. (2) The degree of coupling coordination gradually increases, and the overall type of coupling coordination is from low coupling coordination to moderate coupling coordination. The differences among the three regions are gradually narrowing, and the Yangtze River Economic Belt is developing in a balanced and healthy way on the whole. (3) There is a long-term equilibrium relationship between the two systems, which is granger cause for each other. The two have mutual influence on themselves and each other, forming a positive progressive effect between them, and the promotion degree of urban human settlement environment to the tourism industry is greater than that of the tourism industry to improve the urban human settlement environment. Based on the above research results, governance suggestions are put forward in order to provide ideas for the sustainable development of tourism industry and urban human settlement environment in the Yangtze River Economic Belt.