The year 2014 marked the rapid expansion of big data in urban studies and planning practices in China. Big data has advantages of revealing individual characteristics rather than a general feature by traditional statistics, and it is consistent with the idea of people-oriented urbanization and urban–rural planning. The research progress of big data since 2000 in China is reviewed in this paper. Focusing on behavior big data mining and big data application in urban studies and planning practices, the review is proposed from four parts, involving behavior data acquisition & analysis, spatial analysis, plan making & management application and new methodologies with big data. Lastly, some open research issues such as potential challenges and possible directions of development are discussed