Various governments are planning their cities to be climate responsive by reducing the energy consumption and carbon emissions according to different future scenarios without negatively affecting occupants aspirations to experience good indoor comfort conditions.A tool that can estimate the energy use intensity(EUI)of a city is thus required.This paper presents a new bottom-up engineering-based multi-layer approach able to analyze the energy performance of existing or in-design stage settlements of every size by embedding a high level of detail on both geometric and thermal characteristics sides.The process involves: i)the creation of a physical 3D urban model,ii)building up templates resembling different buildings characteristics such as function,age of construction and operating schedule,iii)running dynamic thermal simulations and iv)displaying the EUI or total energy demand in the 3D model(post-processing of the outputs in text files format allows for further investigations).This approach offers a flexible simulation process that fits various purposes,and it is deemed particularly useful in decision-making for urban energy retrofitting or planning of new areas.Indeed,the use of hourly high-resolution energy profiles would greatly benefit the detailed analysis of energy efficiency strategies and renewable energy technologies applications at urban scales.The proposed approach is demonstrated for the case of Yuzhong district in Chongqing municipality(China).