The environmental thermal loading on urban buildings is governed by its climate. It has long been recognised that cities exhibit distinct climates, and are typically warmer than surrounding rural areas to describe the influence of the urban heat island (UHI) effect. This distinctiveness must be accounted for when assessing urban energy interactions, with site-specific loading assessments requiring the procurement of data that defines the local microclimate, either from monitoring campaigns, or calculated from governing variables. This paper reviews the stateof- the-art of the latter simulation approaches. An abridged version of this review is also represented by Gunawardena (2021).