Historical areas and surrounding communities take on dual functions of carrying daily life and continuing traditional culture. This paper defines historic areas and surrounding communities as “historical areas with a certain scale of historical remains and surrounding communities in cities with residential functions, which retain street textures, traditional styles or ethnic local characteristics, reflecting a certain historical period, and of which higher value is entered into the protection lists at all levels through legal procedures”. As crucial parts of urban communities, urban historical areas and surrounding communities have multiple values and functions. Firstly, as basic units of urban community network, the urban historic areas and surrounding communities have values of residence and its relevant commercial use. Secondly, as symbols of local cultural space, the urban historical areas and surrounding communities reflect cultural value of historical heritage and life. Lastly, the urban historic areas and surrounding communities have public values of communication, leisure, cultural entertainment, tourism and civic activities within and outside the communities. The rapid urbanization has a tremendous impact on the daily life of urban historical areas and surrounding communities. To improve the quality of life in historical areas and surrounding communities, the community satisfaction of historical area has gradually become the standard for measuring the success of urban renewal. However, the number of studies on the historical areas and surrounding communities is relatively limited. Drawing on the research perspective of community satisfaction of urban historic areas and surrounding communities, the following two issues are worth in-depth discussion. First, how to establish an evaluation index system for evaluating the satisfaction of historic areas and surrounding communities based on the needs of residents? On one hand, the historical areas and surrounding communities should meet the living needs to the greatest extent, including accessibility, comfort and safety. On the other hand, it should serve the overall planning and the public functions of the cultural space. A more comprehensively established evaluation index system from the perspective of qualitative and quantitative combination directly affects the evaluation of future community planning. The second question is how to incorporate the residents’ questionnaire survey and various indicators based on community satisfaction theory and embed it into early evaluation stage of community planning. The aims are to provide ideological guidance for the establishment of community planning evaluation system and formulate more targeted planning suggestions. Based on the community satisfaction theory and people-oriented community planning, this paper focuses on a case study of Changlefang Area, Xi’an, which contains cultural heritage and communities. First, the paper investigated residents’ perception of the current living situation and made a satisfaction evaluation system for the historic area and surrounding communities. Second, based on the questionnaire survey and fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method, this paper conducts a comprehensive evaluation of community satisfaction in historical area and surrounding communities. Lastly, based on the evaluation results, planning suggestions are put forward for the improvement of community satisfaction in the historic area, aiming to provide a reference for the sustainable development of other communities in China. The final score results show that the residents’ satisfaction is in descending order as social belonging, place shaping and community environment. Therefore, the community environment is the priority for planning intervention. The result of the research could provide suggestions on how to improve the community satisfaction of historical areas and surrounding communities, including improving the living environment and public space, improving the comfort of place and the diversity of activities through community public space planning, and enhancing the sense of community belonging through the community identification system and urban furniture design. The paper targets to those communities surrounding historical areas which face challenges of sustainable development and provides suggestions on how to integrate residents’ need into community planning. The questionnaire survey and fuzzy comprehensive evaluation of community satisfaction method will provide an approach to solve problems in other historical areas and surrounding communities worldwide.