With the acceleration of urbanization and the rapid population growth, the internal pattern of urban space is changing, and the urban heat island effect is increasing. This paper aims to seek sustainable development based on the relationship between the surface thermal environment and buildings as well as the population. Compared with other studies, novel data such as airborne thermal infrared images, airborne lidar data, building vector data and census data of Shinjuku district in Tokyo are used in this paper. The biggest innovation lies in the quantitative analysis of building density, average building height, average land surface temperature (LST) and population density. The results show that the correlation between average LST and building density is the largest (r=0.6718), followed by the correlation between average LST and population density (r=0.6050). The building density is positively correlated with the population density (r=0.4949). The average LST is negatively correlated with the average building height (r=-0.3814). It is concluded that rational planning of urban internal structure can provide reference for reducing urban heat island effect and sustainable environmental development.