Identifying the migration and evolution of Production-Living-Ecological space(PLE space) and understanding the changes of spatial characteristics triggered by it have a profound influence on optimizing the layout of national land space and improving utilization level. Taking the urban agglomeration in the upper reaches of the Yellow River basin as the research object, based on the transfer matrix, the spatio-temporal evolution rule of the PLE space in the study area from 2000 to 2020 was analyzed. On this basis, by means of the strength analysis model, the change stability brought by the spatial evolution was discussed and quantified, from the dual perspective of the primary and secondary classification of the PLE space, respectively. The results revealed that: (1) The spatial change of PLE space in the study area was active during the past 20 years, but with a decreasing tendency in the amount and the scale, which was also concentrated upon the Hubao Eryu urban agglomeration and the Ningxia urban agglomeration along the Yellow city cluster, with the distribution high in the east and low in the west. Nevertheless, the overall pattern was still dominated by the ecological space and the production and living space were followed. (2) During the past 20 years, the spatial change trend of PLE space in the basin was first strong and then weak, which was unstable as a whole. The increase of production and living space was active and stable, while the decrease tended to be gentle. The increase of ecological space tended to be gentle, but the decrease tended to be active, and the stress of the first two groups on the ecological space tended to be normal. At the same time, PLE space in the basin was frequently transferred to each other, and there were two stable systematic transformation modes of production-life, life-ecological. (3) The transformation of PLE space within the secondary classification level was the dominant reason for the change of production, living and ecological space, while the development of economic drive, the influence of urban attraction, as well as the guidance of macro policies were the internal mechanisms that caused the alternant change of PLE space in the basin. (4) The joint research framework of transfer matrix and the intensity analysis model would realize the integrated monitoring of change monitoring and the changes of the characteristics of the regional PLE space. The improvement of space utilization efficiency, regulation of urban scale, persistence of cultivated land protection, fulfillment of effective space exit mechanism, and giving play to the guiding role of macro policies on space transform will have positive impacts on the high-quality utilization of PLE space of the study area.