It is of great significance to explore the evolutional characteristics and driving factors of urban and rural construction land to promote the sustainable development of national space. In terms of policy quantification, existing studies often only focus on the restrictive policies refraining urban expansion, less on the driving policies guiding urban development, and mostly focus on the overall scale, do not consider the differences of each unit within the region. In order to explore the land use type transfer and landscape pattern evolution from 2000 to 2020，Dongting Lake eco-economic zone was taken as an example, the main driving factors of the evolution of construction land at the whole region and county (city, district) level with the help of regression analysis and landscape expansion index were searched, and the driving effect of policy factors on the expansion of construction land was quantified. The results show that the landscape structure of cultivated land and construction land in Dongting Lake eco-economic zone has changed significantly from 2000 to 2020. The growth of construction land is mainly attributed to occupied cultivated land with its annual change rate increasing from 1.968% to 1.973%. The analysis of landscape pattern shows that the landscape advantage of construction land is gradually enhancing, while the fragmentation of cultivated land and forest land is increased. The distribution of water area is more concentrated, and the overall landscape tends to be discretized and complex. On the universal scale, the driving effect of socio-economic factors on the evolution of construction land is more obvious. The increase of the distance from each unit to the downtown will reduce the expansion opportunity of construction land to 0.615 times of the original. Each patch mainly expands adjacently with the expansion center moving to the south slightly. On the county (city, district) scale, socio-economic, natural and policy factors show regional differences. The land for transportation has increased significantly, and the growth of construction land is mainly due to the traffic construction. The research results will help Dongting Lake eco-economic zone to achieve the goal of "paying attention to large-scale protection and not engaging in large-scale development", and provide a guiding basis for optimizing the pattern of national space development and protection.