Abstract：Kunming, Chongqing and Chengdu in southwest China are a lakeside city in the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau, a mountain city beside a river and a plain city respectively and have different geological environments. Many environmental geological issues closely related to the sustainable development of cities have occurred to different extent in these cities with their fast development from the 1980s. Kunming is confronted with land subsidence and soft ground. Frequent landslide and rockfall events have obstructed Chongqing's development and expansion. The integrity and runoff ability of the groundwater system in the giant diluvial-alluvial fan of the Minjiang River have been seriously destructed by the rapid development of Chengdu located above a ground reservoir of the western Sichuan plain. Environmental geological issues should be the most important factors considered in city planning and drafting a rational city-planning scheme is the effective approach to inhibiting the deterioration of the geological environment.