Soil ecosystem is an important component of the global terrestrial ecosystem. Soil provides man with food, regulates the water and atmosphere, and supports the other ecosystems in cycling. Human beings have been relying on and will continue to have to rely on the services provided by soil for survival, while human activities have profoundly altered the soil ecosystems across the globe since the industrial revolution, especially urbanization, of which the effect is mostly irreversible. China is right now in the process of ongoing rapid urbanization, but little attention has been paid to losing of the soil ecosystem services. It is, therefore, critically important to understand processes and mechanism of urbanization affecting soil ecosystem services for healthy urban development. For that reason, a summary is presented in this paper of development processes of the definition, classification and assessment of soil ecosystem services. Soil ecosystem services can be defined as welfares provided to human beings by soil, a specific natural capital. Monetary value and material quantity are the two major scales for quantification of ecosystem service. As quantification of material production may be done by modeling ecological processes, it is an applicable method for quantification of soil ecosystem services. Although quite a number of eco-process-based ecosystem service evaluation models, such as GUMBO, ARIES and InVEST, are available for use to evaluate soil ecosystem services, none of them is specific to evaluation of soil ecosystem services. Urbanization processes may affect soil ecosystem services both positively and negatively, but mainly the latter. Urbanization alienates large tracts of productive land, thus leading decline of the services of supplying food, fiber, wood, etc. to the mankind. Urban pavements form an impermeable seal over the soil, blocking or hindering water exchange between the pedosphere, atmosphere and hydrosphere. Besides, it also seriously restrains the regulating service of the soil ecosystem, like water storage, carbon sequestration, pollution purification and so on. Nevertheless, urbanization is also a coin of two sides. It helps improve some local ecosystem services, like cultural services, increase in forest land area in arid regions as a result of proper urban management. Although researches were done in the past from various angles to study effects of urbanization on the supply, regulation and culture services of the ecosystem, little has been reported on comprehensive systems study on responses of soil ecosystems to rapid urbanization in service. To make up the gap, a framework is proposed for analysis of processes and mechanisms of the soil ecosystem responding to urbanization. Loss of ecological land, population convergence and pollutant discharge are held to be the main driving forces of the changes in soil ecosystems, like changes in composition, physic-chemical and biogeochemical processes of the soil. The changes, in turn, affect the soil ecosystem producing and delivering services, which will eventually be embodied as feedback in the urban ecosystem. In view of the shortages in the research on classification and modeling of soil ecosystems, focal points are recommended for researches in future, that is, to establish a soil ecosystem service classification system with standards; to build up an eco-process based model for quantification of soil ecosystem services; to unfold researches on mapping and weighing of soil ecosystem services; and to intensify researches on mechanisms and processes of the responses of soil ecosystem services to urbanization. It is hoped that more and more people will be concerned about and involved in researches on soil ecosystem services, and that the findings of the researches will be applied to decision-making of the government on management of soil resource and construction of eco-civilization.