Many high-rise buildings were erected during the urban development of China and many other countries. Considering that artificial structures and buildings have special morphology, with different materials and distribution patterns, they might form artificial shade environment different from natural shade formed by trees. To study the differences between artificial and natural shade in urban area, we measured light environment of typical artificial shade created by urban buildings and canopy shade created by trees in August with a portable fiber optic spectroscope (ULS2048XL, Avantes Inc., The Netherlands). The results showed that buildings and tree canopy alter the shade microenvironment at different levels. Both types of shade caused attenuation of light intensity. The total daytime photosynthetic active radiation (PAR) for building shade was reduced to 9.09% of the natural sky radiation on sunny days, whereas the total PAR for canopy shade was reduced to 5.50% of natural sky radiation. The hourly values of the PAR in the two types of shade were under 200 μmol m^-2 s^-1, and under 100 μmol m^-2 s^-1 for most daytime hours in building shade. These values were lower than the light saturation points of most urban plants. Different types of shade also affect the light quality, such as the ratio of blue/PAR (B/P), blue/red (B/R), blue/far-red (B/FR), and red/far-red (R/FR). Due to light reflection and scattering, the ratio of blue light in PAR (0.360 ±0.009) for building shade was significantly higher than the ratio of the natural sky radiation and canopy shade. Because of absorption and utilization of the blue light by canopy, lowest the B/P ratio was obtained for canopy shade. The ratios of B/R and B/FR for building shade were also higher than those in the other two light environments. The B/R ratio for building shade was 1.196 ±0.036, whereas it was 0.666 ±0.022 under natural sky radiation. There was no significant difference in the R/FR ratio between natural sky radiation and building shade, reaching 1.048 ±0.068 and 1.108 ±0.093, respectively. However, the R/FR ratio for canopy shade (0.422 ±0.111) was lower than it in the other two light environments. The light quality of urban building shade may be beneficial to the photosynthesis of urban plants and may change some aspects of plant physiology and morphology by influencing phytochrome and blue light receptors. We calculated the R/FR ratio by integrating two different bands that were used in previous studies and found that the two methods of integration had no significant effect on the results. The values of the B/R ratio calculated by integration of the wide band were lower than those of the narrow band, but the differences were very small. Therefore, the two types of integration methods may be universally applied in plant photosynthetic and physiological studies. We also measured the light environment of lightflects formed by buildings. The results indicated that lightflects by glass reflection improve light intensity of the building shade, which may be significant to urban plants grown under low light conditions. In conclusion, this study provides a reference for future studies investigating the impact of urban environment, urban configuration of greening species, and landscape planning on plant growth.