Abstract: This paper takes the six central cities in Wuling Mountain Area as the research object, constructs the evaluation index system of grade city construction consisting of four grade factors including economy, society, culture and environment and 24 indexes, determines the index weight by entropy weight method, and analyzes the temporal and spatial evolution of grade city construction by TOPSIS and GIS. The results show that in the urban construction of the six central cities in Wuling Mountain Area, the average closeness degree from high to low is: Jishou City, Enshi City, Tongren City, Huaihua City, Qianjiang District, Zhangjiajie City. In terms of time dimension, the urban grade of Enshi City and Huaihua City decreased year by year, while the change of Zhangjiajie City, Jishou City and Qianjiang District was small, and Tongren City improved greatly. In terms of spatial dimension, the pattern of economic, social, cultural and environmental grade is slightly different, and the development pattern of different grade factors is different. The overall grade changes from "high in the central part, low in the two wings" to "high in the northwest, low in the southeast", and finally forms a development pattern of "high in the central part, low in the north and south". Finally, in order to promote the high quality development of the city in Wuling Mountain Area and improve the city grade, the paper puts forward suggestions  from four aspects: economic construction, social facilities, cultural strength and ecological environment.

Key words: central city, grade city, technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution, geographic information system, spatio-temporal variation, Wuling Mountain Area