The impact of the urban form on the energy demand of buildings is difficult to quantify as, usually, the mutual shading of buildings in urban settings is not included in dynamic building simulations. As a result, there is not much information available on how the total primary energy demand is affected by the specific urban form. In this work, various generic urban forms for residential building quarters were analysed with regard to their overall energy performance. For selected forms, detailed simulations of the heating and cooling energy demand were carried out, including the shading effects of neighbouring buildings. The parameters chosen for the urban form variation include the site density, settlement and building typology (block structures, row houses, multi-family houses, high-rise, etc.), building age and national thermal standard. Using the geometrically simplified model, parameter variations were carried out to calculate the impact of the urban form on the total energy demand. In heating dominated climates, the energy demand for heating increases between 17% and 25% for site densities between 30% and 60%. For a given urban site, compact, multi-family apartment blocks provide the lowest CO2 emissions per capita. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.