Assessing the degree of coupling and coordination between intensive land use and ecological civilization construction is crucial for enhancing urban land use efficiency and fostering sustainable urban and regional development. Despite this, there is a dearth of in-depth studies on the coupling relationship between these two aspects within the Yellow River Basin, an area characterized by fragile ecology and significant ecological challenges. This paper focuses on 58 cities within the Yellow River Basin as the study area and spans the period from 2011 to 2021. It constructs an evaluation index system for intensive land use and ecological civilization construction based on their coupling mechanism, comprehensively evaluates the levels of both, and analyzes their coupled development using the relative development degree model, coupling coordination degree model, kernel density estimation, and spatial autocorrelation model. The study examines the coupling development status and its spatial and temporal evolution trends. It is found as follows.①The comprehensive level of urban land intensive use and ecological civilization construction in the Yellow River Basin has shown an upward trend from 2011 to 2021, yet there are substantial regional disparities, and the overall level of land intensive use remains low;②With the exception of some economically advanced provincial capitals, the land intensive use in the majority of cities lags behind ecological civilization construction, with only Jinan and Taiyuan achieving synchronous development;③The coupling and coordination degree of intensive land use and ecological civilization construction in the study area is generally increasing, with most cities transitioning from a state of dislocation to coordination, exhibiting a pattern of higher levels in the east and lower levels in the west, with significant spatial clustering. The study"s outcomes offer empirical evidence for the high-quality coordinated development of cities in the Yellow River Basin and can serve as a reference for other regions interested in adopting similar research methodologies.