China’s urban elderly service has gone through 70 years. It has a great significance to analyze the development of urban elderly service for summing up historical experience and better coping with the challenges of population aging. Based on the fourdimensional framework of allocation, provision, delivery and finance, we found that urban elderly service forms a development path from social relief to ondemand service, from institutional service to diversified service, from government monopoly to pluralistic mechanism, from full government funding to mixed financial resources. But there are also some problems, such as low availability and utilization, structural imbalance and system separation, insufficient supply capacity of private institutions, and financing predicament. The main development trends of urban elderly service in the future are to establish the value of allocation shared by all the people, to achieve the effect of balanced and integrated service, to enhance the market capacity of delivery strategy, and to establish a governmentled service financing structure.