This paper describes alternative methods for predicting surface irradiance in the urban context. In this the focuses on means of accounting for the effects of nearby obstructions on reducing direct sky radiation and on contributing reflected radiation. The first two methods involve abstracting the urban skyline into an effective canyon using isotropic and anisotropic tilted surface irradiance models. The third predicts the irradiance contribution from two hemispheres which are discretised into patches-given the radiance of the sky and dominant obstructions (if these exist) and associated view factors-so that we have a new simplified radiosity algorithm (SRA). Results from the three methods (isotropic canyon (IC), anisotropic canyon (AC) and simplified radiosity algorithm (SRA)) are compared with a 'truth model' under the following circumstances: (i) unobstructed sky, (ii) sky obstructed by black surfaces, (iii) sky obstructed by grey diffusely reflecting surfaces. Results show conclusively that the SRA offers superior accuracy at comparable speed to the canyon models. The SRA also compares well with a ray tracing program, it can handle urban scenes of arbitrary geometric complexity and is readily amenable for inclusion into standard computer programs that require sui face irradiance as an input. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.