The real reason Dubai works: they treat the city like a product, not a place. Constant iteration, customer feedback loops, feature updates. Most cities govern. Dubai optimizes.
I’m genuinely tired of the “Dubai has no culture” take.
First, Dubai has its own. Pearl diving, Bedouin traditions, a history shaped by the sea, the desert and trade routes with Persia. Most visitors never bother to look for it. It’s not Rome. It’s not Paris. But it’s there.
Second, culture isn’t ancient by nature. It just feels that way once it’s fully formed. New York in the 1930s was a city of strangers. Expats, immigrants, people who didn’t belong anywhere else, who came with nothing and were building everything from scratch. There was no “authentic New York culture”, just ambitious people side by side, meeting and creating. That became the culture.
Dubai is the same experiment running right now, with 200 nationalities in the mix instead of 20. Everyone’s building the culture together — even the soulless influencers and the crypto bros.
Dubai (also Abu Dhabi, Sharjah, etc.) they’re New York in the 1930s. A blank canvas where culture is still being made.