###### Abstract
Previous studies have addressed Mongolia's urban development based on Landsat, MODIS(Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer), and other spatial analysis methods, but most of them have focused on urban expansion [7; 24; 25] and environmental changes [20; 21; 26]: Only a few studies have incorporated urban residents' livelihood. Although some studies have shown that the excessive expansion of urban areas brings dramatic and critical changes to residents in terms of unfairness, environmental pollution, and congestion [20; 22; 26; 27], the lack of coordination between urbanization and the livelihood level of urban residents in Mongolia has received relatively limited scholarly attention. Coupling is a concept of physics, and it refers to the phenomenon in which two or more systems affect one another through various interactions [28]. Coupling between systems is either benign or unbenign [29], and coupling coordination can be seen as the coupling and coordination relationship between systems, which reflects whether the relationship is a benign interaction and optimizes circulation [30]. The coupling coordination degree (CCD) is a measure of the coupling coordination relationship between systems. The CCD is now widely used in studies of the relationship between urbanization and residents' livelihood level [19; 31; 32; 33]. By taking 284 cities in China as research objects, [PERSON], et al. [19] analyzed the spatial-temporal evolution of the CCD between urbanization and residents' livelihood and found that the spatial distribution of the CCD in China was not balanced, and high coordination areas were mainly distributed in the major cities. Additionally, they found that the industrial level, economic development level, and informatization level were important factors affecting CCD. Using the data of 150 counties in the Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei region from 2000-2012, [PERSON] and [PERSON] [32] found a lack of coordination between urbanization and residents' livelihood level, and they emphasized that rapid urban expansion should be strictly controlled and residents' livelihood level should be improved. [PERSON] et al. [33] took Shandong Peninsula as a study area and analyzedcoordination between urban expansion and residents' livelihood level. They found that the rate of urban expansion was much higher than the increase in the residents' livelihood level, and they suggested that in the process of urban development, it is necessary to strengthen infrastructure construction, optimize industrial structures, increase investment in science and technology, and continuously improve the livelihood level of residents. Despite the plethora of literature on the CCD between urbanization and the livelihood level of urban residents, it is mostly China that has been studied. However, as mentioned above, Mongolia's urbanization issue is complicated, and the extent to which the results of the practice and research in larger nations can be effectively applied to Mongolia is unclear. Therefore, a targeted theoretical exploration and empirical data analysis are meaningful for related practices, and analysis is badly needed for an overall evaluation of the CCD between urbanization and urban residents' livelihood level in Mongolia. That said, how do we estimate the CCD? What is the spatiotemporal evolution feature of the CCD? What factors drive the CCD between urbanization and residents' livelihood level? Based on these research questions, this paper used statistical data in the five periods of 2004, 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2016 and took 22 regions of Mongolia as its research object to measure the CCD between urbanization and residents' livelihood level. With the help of the \(K\)-means clustering method and the spatial Durbin model (SDM), this study explored both the spatial patterns and the driving factors of the CCD. The rest of this paper is organized as follows. A brief introduction of the study area is presented in Section 2. An explanation of the data sources and an interpretation of the study methods are presented in Section 3.