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• Sustainable development is a major social challenge in China. • Sustainability and fairness of Xiamen's city development were determined. • Xiamen is regionally sustainable but nationally unsustainable. • Xiamen should be more involved in the mitigation of environmental challenges. • The city should better harness local resources. Ecological footprint is an operational quantitative method to convert the biological resources consumed by human beings and the wastes discharged into bioproductive land area. Compared to the ecological carrying capacity, the ecological footprint model can evaluate the sustainability of regional development. However, owing to shortcomings in the evaluation of regional sustainable development, the ecological footprint model is unable to reflect the ecological inequity between regions caused by trade, and so it has been revised to a consumptive and productive ecological footprint model. The purpose of this study was to analyze the changing trends of productive and consumptive ecological footprint and deficit by calculating the ecological footprint of Xiamen City, China, from 2010 to 2019. This study also evaluates the sustainability and fairness of this zone's development and determines the patterns of its sustainable development. The results show that the productive ecological surplus of Xiamen increased by nearly 15 times from − 0.0084 in 2010 to 0.1165 in 2019, while the consumption ecological deficit increased by 30 times, from 0.0228 in 2010 to 0.3338 in 2019. Therefore, Xiamen is regionally sustainable but nationally unsustainable as it takes up the resources of other regions of the country. The city should take more responsibility for current national ecological problems. Therefore, within the rational range of its ecological carrying capacity, Xiamen should harness local natural resources, ensure a sufficient supply of local farmland, increase the yield per unit of agricultural products, and ensure consumption of more locally-produced products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]