Embodiments of the present disclosure disclose a method and apparatus for urban road recognition based on a laser point cloud. The method comprises: constructing a corresponding road edge model according to the laser point cloud acquired by a laser sensor; determining a height of a mobile carrier provided with the laser sensor and constructing a corresponding road surface model based on the height and the laser point cloud; eliminating a road surface point cloud and a road edge point cloud in the laser point cloud according to the road edge model and the road surface model, segmenting a remaining laser point cloud using a point cloud segmentation algorithm, and recognizing an object corresponding to a segmenting result. By estimating the height of the mobile carrier according to the laser point cloud and constructing a corresponding road surface model using the height, the efficiency and accuracy of constructing the road surface model are improved, thereby improving the efficiency and accuracy of recognizing corresponding objects.