In order to quantitatively explore the causes of urban river changes, this paper took the central urban district of Foshanas an example to analyze the evolution of river network and its driving factors. According to the one-to-many mapping relationshipbetween the change of river network and its driving factors, the spatial auto-regression and geographic weighted regression modelswere used to analyze the statistical relationships wholly and partially. The results show that: (1) The IV-order rivers have the mostdramatic changes and its length reduction account for about 92.3% of the total-order rivers changes. And the encroachment of urbanland on paddy field and industrial land on waters, the agricultural activities are the major driving forces affecting the IV-orderrivers. (2) As a whole, the IV-order rivers are deeply affected by the expansion of construction land, especially the expansion ofindustrial land. In the local view, the negative effects of each driving factor vary in different spatial positions. Taking paddy fieldand urban land-use factors as an example, its negative effects are significant on the border areas among Luocun, old town andGuicheng, as well as on the border areas among Nanzhuang, Luocun and old town.(3) The spatial auto-regression has advantage onthe relationship between the changes of river network and its driving factors in a whole, while the geographic weighted regressionmodel can describe the spatial nonstationarity of the influence of driving factors, and it is beneficial for obtaining local information.The two combined models can more fully reveal the causes of the evolution of river network.