The urban river，especially the central city river suffered serious problems from water quality pollution to ecosystem degradation. With deepening of long-acting management of urban river，Shanghai has issued policy，maintenance standards and management systems. River maintenance management is moving in the direction of the scientific，orderly and healthy development. Recently，the city launched a large-scale ecological restoration. But restricted by technology oriented，there is still a considerable distance from the ecological restoration target of river course. In this paper，the main factors that lead to the ecological degradation and ecological restoration of the middle and small rivers are analyzed. As the main trends of river management，urban river restoration in line with the principle of nature respecting，using ecological means by human intervention，start the self-organization process of the ecological system and restore the natural function and status of rivers，to achieve a win-win situation of ecological environment protection and river regulation. And briefly introduces the river ecological restoration technology and management policy. It was advanced that infrastructure construction and policy mechanism were the basis for the implementation of long-term management of ecological restoration.