生态城市是现代城市达到自然、社会、经济三类子系统协调复合的唯一途径，生态文明城市是生态城市建设的高级阶段并开始成为我国城市环保工作的新潮流和新目标，建立一套成熟可行的生态文明城市量化指标体系具有重要意义。以太湖流域某城市的实践为例，在分析生态城市与生态文明内涵的基础上，结合城市复合生态系统和人类生态学理论，认为环保模范城市、生态市、生态文明市是我国生态城市建设工作的低、中、高三个层次和阶段，生态文明城市指标应具备先行成果的承续性和创新领域的先进性，以此提出太湖流域生态文明城市量化指标的设计原则、基本框架和建议指标。

Eco city is the only way to achieve a co-ordination compound sub-systems including nature, society and economy in modern city. The Environmental Protection Model City, eco-city, ecological civilization City is China's eco-city construction work the low, medium and high three levels and stages. Ecological civilization, the advanced stage of construction of eco-city, is beginning to become the new trend of China's urban environmental protection and new goals. Therefore, to establish a mature possible quantitative indicator for the ecological system of urban civilization is of great significance. Recent studies and practice show that lack of a set of standard and integrate index is the main drawback of ecological-civilization-experimental-city construction, though discussions based on theory go further. In this study we wanted to explore the question of how to build a set of practical metrics for ecological-civilization-city construction. Taking cities in Taihu Lake Basin for example, a framework constitutes of five-system and three-layer with 41 indicators was proposed.