The spatial and temporal evolution trend, gravity center migration and spatial correlation of the coordinated relationship between economic development and ecological environment in 53 coastal cities from 2006 to 2016 are studied by using coupled coordination and spatial correlation models. The results indicate that the coordinated development between the economic development and the ecological environment in the coastal cities of China shows, as a whole, a good trend, but the overall coordination degree is not high and still in an initial stage of coordinated development. A serious spatial imbalance occurs in the degree of coordinated development among the coastal cities and tends to expand gradually. The areas with a relatively high coordination degree are mainly distributed in the provincial capital cities and the cities specifically designed in the state plan, whereas most other cities are still in an imbalance state. From 2006 to 2016, the gravity center of the coordination degree was located in Jinhua City of Zhejiang Province and migrated toward southwest gradually. Both the global Moran^'s I index and the local Moran scatter graph show that the degree of coordination is positively correlated in space and has a strong spatial agglomeration.