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Urbanization is a comprehensive and complex socioeconomic phenomenon that plays an influential role in promoting global socioeconomic development. The Loess Plateau region is an important part of the China's ecological security pattern, and occupies an important position in the implementation of China's new-type urbanization strategy and the realization of the urban dream. The characteristics of the staged changes and regional differentiation of urbanization in the area from 1990 to 2018 were studied with focus on regions and subregions by selecting 341 county-level administrative units on the Chinese Loess Plateau as the research area, and employing partition analysis and geographic detector methods. This revealed the formation mechanism of the spatial differentiation pattern of urbanization on the Loess Plateau. We found that the urbanization of the Loess Plateau, previously in a slow growth phase, entered the accelerated development phase, presenting a macro pattern of high rates of urbanization in central and eastern areas and low rates in western areas. The formation of the regional differentiation patterns of urbanization on the Loess Plateau were the combined results of natural geographical and socioeconomic factors. Among these factors, the interaction of any two factors had a stronger impact on regional urbanization patterns than a single factor, which was specifically manifested as nonlinear or bi-factor enhancement effects. The findings of this paper may provide a theoretical reference and scientific basis for the scientific promotion of healthy urbanization on the Chinese Loess Plateau and the ecologically fragile areas of developing countries around the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]