<p>In the context of the national strategy for ecological protection and high-quality development of the Yellow River basin (YRB), it is an urgent task to achieve coordinated development of urbanization and the atmospheric environment in the basin. In this paper, we construct a comprehensive system of evaluation indicators for urbanization and the atmospheric environment in YRB, focusing on nine provinces within the basin from 2011 to 2022. The coupled coordination degree model and the Tapio decoupling model are used to analyze the coupled coordination relation between urbanization and the atmospheric environment. In the end, the difference in the degree of coupling coordination in the spatiotemporal series is analyzed. The results suggest that: (1) the urbanization level of YRB shows a steady upward trend, and the differences among provinces are obvious. Economic urbanization has the greatest impact on the overall urbanization level, while spatial urbanization level has the smallest growth rate and is the weak link in the urbanization development of the provinces in YRB. (2) The overall level of atmospheric environment in YRB is on the rise. Atmospheric environment in some provinces showed a trend of slow development or even decline from 2012 to 2015. (3) From the coupling coordination degree (CCD) of urbanization and atmospheric environment in YRB, the CCD of urbanization development and atmospheric environment showed a steady upward trend from 2011 to 2022. The CCD of the provinces in YRB presents a spatial pattern of "high in the middle and lower reaches and low in the upper reaches". The results of this study have led to the formulation of a series of policy recommendations designed to enhance the urbanization and atmospheric environment of YRB.</p>