Rapid urbanization has driven economic and social development, but it has also led to continued growth in building energy consumption. It is of great significance to ensure the user comfort while controlling the growth of building energy use. Accurate quantification of urban buildings’ energy demand can support energy efficient and sustainable community design, assist urban morphology generation and optimization, building layout optimization, building shape and construction design, HVAC system optimization, assessment of the energy program and policy. In recent years, researchers worldwide have carried out research of urban scale energy consumption calculation methods from different perspectives, and encountered different technical difficulties. This paper provides a critical review on the energy modeling methods at urban neighborhood scale from the following three aspects: database, models and platforms. Through literature review, the authors indicate the advantages and limitations of current urban building energy calculation methods and tools, and propose the following possible approaches to improve the operational energy consumption calculation method for urban buildings: (1) develop micro-environment data generation methods that can be directly applied to energy consumption calculation of urban buildings; (2) improve the capabilities to collect, filter and convert the building information data by introducing the data mining technique; (3) introduce the cluster analysis and artificial intelligence technology to improve the speed of energy consumption calculation; (4) develop a visualization platform to realize real-time editing and calculating of urban design.