The carrying capacity of land resources is the basis of urban development strategy decision-making, which is of great significance for guiding urban sustainable development and serving the national strategic needs. This paper combs the historical development process of the theory of land resources carrying capacity from the initial stage to the regional carrying capacity stage, and the relevant research hotspots at home and abroad in recent years. The research on the carrying capacity of land resources gradually began to cross with the directions of ecological environment, socio-economic development, climate change and other disciplines, and the research direction continued to expand. However, at present, there are still some shortcomings in the research on the carrying capacity of land resources, some quantitative research and dynamic monitoring mechanisms are not yet mature, and the evaluation index system of land resources carrying capacity needs to be further improved. At present, the more mature analysis and evaluation methods include TOPSIS method with entropy weight, global Moran's I index method, geographical probe analysis method and so on. In the future, in order to further guide and serve the ecological sustainable development of cities, the research on land resources carrying capacity still needs to be expanded to multi-scale and multi-factor aspects, and more statistical models and machine learning should be introduced to meet the multi-faceted needs of the new era.