<p>As an advantaged paradigm of city development, the net-zero carbon city emphasizes that the city should be long-term balanced, human-centric, and responsive, and it strikes a well-balanced between carbon consumption and production. In China, many cities have initiated net-zero carbon city construction for several years. The accurate performance evaluation of net-zero carbon city construction is crucial for measuring the detailed progress and guiding continual improvements according to the net-zero carbon city system. However, owing to the opposition, unity, and mutual restriction in the multiple factors of performance evaluation, as well as the need to investigate interactions between environmental issues and human concerns, a holistic picture is often required to describe the interrelations of its performance. In this respect, this study aims to establish and design a novel holistic performance evaluation framework for net-zero carbon city construction. Firstly, integrating the stability-based, balance-oriented PS-DR-DP (pressure-support, destructiveness-resilience, and degradation-promotion) hexagon interaction model, we analyze the trade-offs and restrictive relationships between the positive and negative interactive forces of performance, and decomposed the interaction to design a composite indicator system. Secondly, for embodying the synergy effect of “1 + 1 &gt; 2” and imprecision of human cognition in the evaluation process, a flexible hesitant fuzzy (HF) cobweb target method is proposed for effective performance evaluation. In this method, a novel HF cobweb target model is presented to characterize expert opinions and epistemic hesitancy. Moreover, an apt bull’s-eye determination technique is modeled based on Schweizer-Sklar’s fuzzy connectives, which allows decision makers (DMs) to express their diverse aspiration strengths for fitting uncertain evaluation scenarios. Finally, the proposed framework is applied to conducting the performance evaluation of net-zero carbon city construction of 6 cities in the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB). Results and sensitivity analyses state that the proposed method has strong practicality, effectiveness, and feasibility. The results showed that the net-zero cities with higher performance mostly have functional coordination and coherent synergies structure. This study provides a reference for policymakers to formulate a scientific strategy for carbon reduction.</p>