The building cross-section shape significantly affects the flow characteristics around buildings, especially the recirculation region behind the high-rise building. Eight generic building shapes including square, triangle, octagon, T-shaped, cross-shaped, #-shaped, H-shaped and L-shaped are examined to elucidate their effects on the flow patterns, recirculation length L and areas A using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations with Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) approach. The sizes and positions of the vortexes behind the buildings are found to be substantially affected by the building shapes and subsequently changing the recirculation flows. The recirculation length L is in the range of 1.6b – 2.6b with an average of 2b. The maximum L is found for L-shaped building (2.6b) while the shortest behind octagon building (1.6b). The vertical recirculation area A_v is in the range of 1.5b² – 3.2b² and horizontal area A_h in 0.9b² – 2.2b². The L, A_v and A_h generally increase with increasing approaching frontal area when the wind direction changes but subject to the dent structures of the #-shaped and cross-shaped buildings. The area-averaged wind velocity ratio (AVR), which is proposed to assess the ventilation performance, is in the range of 0.05 and 0.14, which is around a three-fold difference among the different building shapes. The drag coefficient parameterized by A_h varies significantly, suggesting that previous models without accounting for building shape effect could result in large uncertainty in the drag predictions. These findings provide important reference for improving pedestrian wind environment and shed some light on refining the urban canopy parameterization by considering the building shape effect.