Abstract: A new concept of "mining areas" is defined in accordance with sustainable development, the characteristics of mining areas development are analyzed, and the development Process of mining areas is divided into forming, development and transforming-production Stages. Based on this, at first, evaluation index system for unsustainable development is built, that is mullet-level system consisting of objective, criterion, index levels, and 28 sub-index. Second, It is put forward evaluation of sustainable development of mining areas belongs to time-order, mullet-level and mullet-objective problems. Therefore."Time-order, mullet-level, mullet-objective incidence analysis method" were applied to evaluating present situation sustainable development of mining areas,improved duality-contrast-analysis method to determining the weight of every evaluation objective for forming, and development stages of mining areas. At last, a practice example "Tie Fa mining areas" was given. Every feasible development pattern for the mining areas in forming Stage was evaluated.Based on the evaluation result, corers pounding counter-measures for enhancing the sustain able development capacity of the mining areas are discussed.