Abstract: Promoting harmonious coexistence between humans and nature is an essential component of enhancing people’s quality of life, improving the human settlement environment, and building a Beautiful China. As a distinctive institutional innovation in China’s ecological civilization construction, ecological environment zoning control is currently in the stage of institutional refinement and can serve as a guiding framework for human settlement environment improvement. Through an analysis of the operational logic underlying ecological environment zoning control and human settlement environment improvement, the following findings emerge: in terms of theoretical foundations, both are deeply rooted in ecological threshold theory and externality theory, sharing a common theoretical logic; at the level of technical application, ecological environment zoning control can facilitate human settlement environment improvement by leveraging advanced environmental governance technologies; in terms of value orientation, both take spatial justice, intergenerational justice, and the harmonious coexistence of humans and nature as their shared value goals. Nevertheless, insufficient institutional coordination, barriers in technology application, and imbalances in interest coordination have become the key factors constraining the effectiveness of ecological environment zoning control in enabling human settlement environment improvement. By constructing a governance system structured around “macro-level coordination — meso-level harmonization — micro-level collaboration”, it is possible to advance the role of ecological environment zoning control in enabling human settlement environment improvement and to promote the sustainable development of the ecological environment.