Land use change and its eco-environmental responses are foci in geographical research. As a region with uneven economic development, land use change and eco-environmental responses across Jiangsu Province are relevant to China's overall development pattern. The external function of regional land use changes during different stages of economic development. In this study, we proposed a novel classification system based on the dominant function of land use according to “production-ecology-life”, and then analyzed land use change and regional eco-environmental responses from a functional perspective of regional development. The results showed that from 1985 to 2008, land use change features in Jiangsu were that productive land area decreased and ecological and living land areas increased. Land use changes in southern Jiangsu were the most dramatic. In southern and central parts of Jiangsu the agricultural production function weakened and urban life service function strengthened; in northern Jiangsu, the mining production function's comparative advantage highlighted that the rural life service function was weakening. Ecological environmental quality decreased slightly in Jiangsu and its three regions. The maximum contribution rate to ecological environmental change occurred in southern Jiangsu and the minimum rate was located in the north. Eco-environmental quality deteriorated in southern and central Jiangsu, related to expanding construction land in urban and rural areas. Ecological environmental quality deterioration in northern Jiangsu is probably due to land development and consolidation. The main reason for improvements in regional ecological environments is that agricultural production land was converted to water ecological land across Jiangsu.