Abstract In shallow buried closely spaced multi-seam mining in Jurassic Coalfield in western China, due to specific reasons, it is inevitable that the lower and upper coal seam working faces and coal pillars are overlapped, resulting in stress concentration, uneven subsidence of the ground surface, the deformation and damage of the roadway intensified. In order to decrease surface damage and stress concentration, combined with physical simulation, engineering practices and theoretical analyses, reasonable coal pillar staggered distance in shallow multi-seam mining is investigated. The evolution properties of three-field (stress field, displacement field and fracture field) based on coal pillar staggered distance (CPSD) were analyzed, the determination method of rational CPSD was put up. Research findings reveal that concentrated stress results from upper and lower pillar stress superposition, and the lower pillar should be arranged in the low-stress zone. Through rational pillar arrangement, the uneven subsidence of surface is reduced, and the concentrated fractures of overlying strata and surface are decreased. For No. 1–2 and No. 2–2 coal seam mining, as CPSD is increased, subsidence above the upper coal pillar increases and the uneven subsidence of surface decreases, the concentrated stress reduced by 25%, the width of surface fractures reduced 81.1%. Consequently, rational CPSD on the basis of coupling control of three-field can be determined, the reasonable CPSD is 40–55 m. It can provide a method to realize underground safe mining and ground surface green mining in shallow multi-seam mining.