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The rapid development of China's urban agglomerations has been accompanied by enormous ecological costs. Based on the perspective of ecological constraints, this paper constructed a "quantity-efficiency-structure" evaluation framework for sustainable urban development. Taking the π-shaped Curve Area in the Yellow River Basin as the study area, the improved ecological footprint model and the information entropy method were adopted to evaluate the sustainable development potential (SDP) of the 17 cities in the Area from three aspects: ecological supply and demand (quantity comparison), ecological well-being performance (efficiency assessment), and ecological carrying structure (structure evaluation). From 2005 to 2019, ecological constraints of the three aspects exhibited obvious east-west and north-south spatial heterogeneity and even formed spatial clusters. Through multivariate systematic correlation analysis, openness degree, economic level, population, urbanization rate, industrial structure, scientific innovation, energy consumption, and the role of government were found to have different effects on the SDP and its three aspects. Given the results of the "quantity-efficiency-structure" evaluation and the influencing mechanism of SDP, cities in Area were grouped into weak sustainable, weak unsustainable, strong sustainable, and strong unsustainable types using systematic clustering method, and development suggestions were proposed accordingly. This study was expected to provide new ideas for studying sustainable development and policy proposals for urban development in the Curve Area. [Display omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]