Abstract: This paper utilize Malmquist-Luenberger production index to estimate the environmental total factor productivity of cities in Central China from 2003 to 2015 which involving environmental pollutants as undesirable outputs into the production process. Besides, it decomposes ML index as technology change and efficiency change and uses kernel density to estimates the dynamic distribution of ML. Our empirical study shows that the environmental total factor productivity and technological progress index of the central cities are increasing at an annual rate of 1.39% and 1.85% respectively, and the technical efficiency index is reduced at an annual rate of 0.02%. The growth of the urban environmental total factor productivity in the central region of China is mainly driven by the technological progress, and the technical efficiency has a backward trace. The gaps of ML, TC and EC between cities in the central region of China have been narrowed and there is a clear technological “catching up effect” between the central cities.