Abstract: The paper aims to study the effect of urbanization construction on regional lightning, reveal changes of lightning activity caused by natural environment change, and provide a basis for lightning disaster prevention in different regions. We analyzed the cloud-ground lightning density, diurnal frequency, monthly frequency, seasonal variation and lightning current intensity of the selected urban and non-urban areas based on the lightning location data from 2007 to 2016 in 5 cities of Hubei. The results showed that: the urban lightning density was less than non-urban, and the urban effect reduced the probability of lightning in urban areas; the lightning frequency distribution of urban areas was larger than that of non-urban areas, and the average span value of time-sharing lightning of urban areas was significantly larger than that of non-urban areas; the urban area was affected obviously by local climate; the positive lightning proportion of urban areas was greater than that of non-urban areas in each month, and the lightning intensity of urban areas was larger than that of non-urban areas during lightning active phase. On the whole, the urban effect decreases the cloudground lightning density of the urban area and increases the intensity, and presents the instability such as big lightning current amplitude, thus the urban area is more prone to extreme thunderstorm events.