Which streets give shade?

Comparison study · 13 districts on three continents · measured November 2026, for 21 June

The question

Do tall towers make shady streets, or is something else at work?

The place and the method

Every street within 800 m of the centre of 13 districts, measured in OSMosis for 21 June, the longest day: hours of direct sun on the full width of each street, with shade from buildings and terrain. Streets are the road network without motorways.

What was measured

District	Hours of direct sun on the streets, 21 June
Connaught Place, New Delhi	10.8 h
Olaya, Riyadh	10.0 h
Anna Nagar, Chennai	9.6 h
Deira, Dubai	8.8 h
Downtown Dubai (buildings average 53 m)	8.7 h
Shijo, Kyoto	8.7 h
Bandra West, Mumbai	8.6 h
Eixample, Barcelona	8.2 h
Bastille, Paris (of a possible 15 h, counted hour by hour)	7.1 h
Downtown Abu Dhabi (buildings average 83 m)	6.7 h
Dubai Marina	5.9 h
CBD, Singapore (of a possible 11 h, counted hour by hour)	5.1 h
Midtown, New York (buildings average 97 m)	2.7 h

What it shows

The tallest tower didn't decide the shade. Downtown Dubai has the world's tallest tower, yet its streets got 8.7 hours of direct sun. Its buildings average 53 m; downtown Abu Dhabi's average 83 m (6.7 hours) and Midtown New York's 97 m (2.7 hours).

In these 13 districts, the average building mattered more. Across the 13 districts, street sun followed the average height of the buildings far more closely than the height of the tallest one.

Direction matters too. In all 10 districts with streets running both ways (at least 5% of the street area each way), north–south streets got less sun than east–west ones: in Downtown Dubai, 7.5 hours against 9.6.

What it means for planning

Street direction is usually set in the first masterplan sketch, and the shade it gives lasts for decades.
In these districts the height of the ordinary buildings along a street did more for shade than a landmark tower: worth testing early in a hot climate.

Limits

Shade from buildings and terrain only; trees and canopies are not counted.
Sun is counted hour by hour while the sun is well up: 13 possible hours in most of these districts, 15 in Paris and 11 in Singapore.
Heights are recorded where the map has them and estimated elsewhere.

Questions

Do tall buildings make streets shadier?

Not on their own. In 13 districts measured for 21 June, street sun followed the average building height, not the tallest tower: Downtown Dubai, with the world's tallest tower and a 53 m average, got 8.7 hours of sun on its streets; Midtown New York, with a 97 m average, got 2.7.

Which streets get more shade, north–south or east–west?

In all 10 districts with streets running both ways (at least 5% of the street area each way), north–south streets got less direct sun on 21 June than east–west ones.

The same readings can be made for any place in OSMosis: see how.