An urban canopy model (UCM), with detailed urban land-use and anthropogenic heat information, is required to reproduce and understand the urbanization process and its impact on regional climate and urban air quality. This study investigates the UCM impact on simulated meteorology and surface ozone in the coastal city of Busan using the WRF-SMOKE-CMAQ model coupled with (UCM case), and without the UCM (NOUCM case). The UCM and NOUCM case results suggest that UCM case generally produces warmer temperatures and deeper planetary boundary layer (PBL) heights, especially in the early morning and night time, than the NOUCM case. Owing to urban heating and enhanced turbulent mixing incorporation in the center of the city, the sea breeze in the UCM case tends to penetrate faster and more strongly than in the NOUCM case. After sea breeze arrival at the urban center, the urban heat island effect prevents its penetration further inland. In the UCM case in the late afternoon, local meteorological changes induce remarkable increases in simulated O₃ concentrations over the downwind (up to 17.1 ppb) and downtown (up to 10.6 ppb) areas. This is probably due to an increase in temperature in the urban areas and the wind convergence zone movement due to the sea breeze interaction and offshore flows. The increase in O₃ concentration in the late afternoon results in the model bias reduction under previously underestimated O₃ conditions due to high NOx emissions. The simulated O₃ concentrations in the UCM case are more similar to the observed O₃ concentrations compared to those of the NOUCM case.