Steady economic growth and environmental protection are two contradictory goals of top priorities in China 2016–2020 Planning Project. Cities play important role in economic and environmental development. The research on cities’ economic-pollution relationship is vital to the choices in city developing patterns. This paper investigates the relationship between economic growth and environmental pollution of 111 Chinese prefectural-level cities in the period 2004–2012 and how it might influence the choice of a city’s developing pattern. These 111 cities are classified into five different clusters, one of which has particular pollution-economic relationship and some of which coordinate the EKC theory. The paper suggests that city features, scale effect and composition effect are important in the distribution of cities’ developing patterns.