Based on the strategy of the rise of central China, a case study on the background and necessity of the planning and construction of utility tunnels within the inland benchmarking free trade area (FTA), i.e., Xiangyang FTA, was carried out. A primary plan for the urban roads using utility tunnels was proposed by analysing the urban space, road system, municipal pipeline, high-intensity exploitation and urban landscape, etc., of Xiangyang City. Then, fuzzy mathematical analysis was conducted to evaluate the suitability for constructing the utility tunnels within those preliminarily selected roads. Sixteen roads were finally determined for tunnel construction where the three-level tunnel system composed of trunk-branch-cable lines within the FTA was suggested. Through this case study, it was found that the planning of utility tunnels should be aligned with the urban master planning and the harmonization of the road planning, where the urban space, traffic conditions, and municipal pipeline distributions need to be thoroughly considered. Dynamic adjustment of the planning layout of utility tunnels can be then made based on the updating of each planning.