The scientific assessment of the health level of county ecosystems is the basis for formulating county-based sustainable development strategies. In this paper, we take the county areas of Sichuan Province as the evaluation objects and combine the SDGs (the Sustainable Development Goals) to establish a county ecosystem health evaluation index system based on the VORS (Vigor–Organization–Resilience–Service) model. On this basis, we used the entropy weight method, the Moran index method, and the obstacle degree model to analyze the ecosystem health level, spatial distribution characteristics, and obstacles of 183 counties in Sichuan Province. The main results were as follows: (1) A total of 80.87% of the counties in Sichuan Province were at sub-healthy and healthy levels, concentrated in the southeastern part of Sichuan, and 19.13% of the counties were at an unhealthy level, mainly in the Aba, Ganzi, and Liangshan areas. (2) The health levels of county ecosystems in Sichuan Province had high spatial autocorrelation characteristics. The H–H (High–High) agglomeration area and the L–L (Low–Low) agglomeration area had significant agglomeration characteristics, which were distributed in the Cheng-Mian area and the northwestern Sichuan area, respectively. (3) The key indicators restricting the healthy development of urban ecosystems in Sichuan counties are economic vitality, economic resilience, and quality of life, all of which belong to the economic subsystems, with obstacles reaching 17.25%, 16.68%, and 13.52%, respectively. This study can provide theoretical and methodological support for research into ecosystem health evaluations at the county level, and provide a decision-making basis for promoting the health of county ecosystems and coordinating regional development in Sichuan Province.

Beautiful City construction is a core initiative to realize the Beautiful China vision and advance China’s progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This study develops a unified evaluation framework aligned with official Chinese assessment guidelines and global sustainability objectives. Based on a 2015–2022 dataset of 126 prefecture-level cities in the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB), we adopt Dagum’s Gini coefficient decomposition, kernel density estimation (KDE), and Moran’s I to investigate the spatiotemporal characteristics of beautiful city construction. The results indicate that the regional Beautiful City Construction Index (BI) increased steadily at both the regional and subregional levels, with all sample cities achieving continuous improvement. A consistent development gradient of lower reach > middle reach > upper reach was identified, with gradually narrowing inter-regional gaps. Importantly, the primary source of regional disparity shifted from inter-subregional differences to intra-subregional differences around 2021. Statistically significant positive spatial clustering was observed, with high-value clusters concentrated in downstream areas and low-value clusters in upstream areas, while the overall clustering effect gradually weakened. This study provides empirical evidence for targeted urban governance and regional coordinated development, offering a typical Chinese practice for global SDG research.