Abstract: Resource-based cities rise along with mining development. Because of the exhaustibility of mine resources, it is inevitable for resource-based cities to fall into decay when resources are used up. Taking measures to urban transformation has an important practical significance for the development of resource-based cities. The paper, taking resource-based city, Xuzhou city, as an example, analyzed its characteristics of dissipative structure theory and entropy flow. The results show that the resource-based city is an open system far from equilibrium, with nonlinear dynamic process and dissipative structure function. The entropy flow value of Xuzhou increased from 0.0074 in 2002 to 0.1892 in 2005, and disorder degree increased. This is mainly due to the depletion of mineral resources, industry recession and the destruction of ecological environment. By industrial transformation and ecological restoration, the entropy flow value of Xuzhou showed a downward trend, and decreased to -0.1414 in 2010, performing negative entropy, which indicates that the order degree of Xuzhou city has been continuously improved. This study has reference significance for the transformation and development of other resource-based cities.