The rational planning of urban spatial distribution and development direction could benefit the urban economy, social environment and other aspects, as an essential part of urban planning. Since the Law of EIA promulgated in 2003, the scope of environmental impact assessment has been upgraded to a higher level of overall urban planning whereas the influence is not significant. In 2018, urban and rural planning function was merged into the Ministry of Natural Resources, from leading urban construction to serving the protection of urban natural resources. It is also a new and significant approach to analyse the rationality of urban spatial distribution and development direction from the perspective of environmental impact assessment. The purpose of Jianghua Yao autonomous county is to build an eco-tourism civilized city, which is representative in the selection of cities for environmental impact assessment. On the space structure of functional areas and the development direction to the indicator elements of Yao nationality autonomous county class was divided into 4 categories, 5 layers,15 index factors were selected to construct the environmental impact assessment index system. Using analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to select the indexes weights assignment, then according to the evaluation criterion to evaluate it, we draws the analysis conclusion in the environment aspect. The planned urban spatial distribution and development direction of Jianghua Yao autonomous county from 2014 to 2020 are reasonable, have little negative impact on the environment, and are suitable for the green development of the city.