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While heat mitigation is crucial to achieving sustainable urban development, an inadequate understanding of the evolution of the urban thermal environment (UTE) and how this interacts with socio-ecological systems (SES) constrains the development of effective mitigation strategies. Here, we use satellite observations from 2000-2021 to explore the evolving impact of SES interactions on the UTE of 136 Chinese urban areas. The results reveal a nonlinear intensification of the UTE over the period and an indication that the increasing number of urban areas have successfully applied UTE mitigation measures. Spatio-temporal patterns in UTE are shown to be strongly influenced by social and ecological factors and their interactions, whereby the higher the SES status, the stronger the decreasing UTE trend. These findings highlight the need for, and advantages of, developing win-win solutions for urban society and ecology and have important implications in developing integrated strategies for heat mitigation that can assist in promoting urban sustainability.