Abstract: Taking Huaihe river upstream region as the research scope, field visits, the relationship between cities and rivers from Qin dynasty to today was analy zed using,historical documents and geographic information technology.The space-time evolution characteristics was revealled between cities and rivers. The conclusions are as follows: firstly, the cities’ site selection of this region located in riverside or the confluence of mainstream and its tributaries; secondly, the history of urban distribution in this region stretches from north to south. The number of northern cities and density is bigger than the southern region; thirdly, the number of cities increases fast from the Qin Dynasty to the Western Han Dynasty. The cities develop steadily from the Eastern Han Dynasty to the WeiJin periods, and the number of cities and scale come to peak in the Southern and Northern Dynasty. From then till the Yuan Dynasty, the number of cities is in decline in this region as a whole. Until the Ming Dynasty, the number of cities recovers slightly and presents the modern urban distribution form. From Qing Dynasty to now, the number of cities has increased