Dubai's Gravitational Pull

Shall I stay / Would it be a sin? / If I can’t help / falling in love with you?

Elvis Presley. Lyrics to Can’t Help Falling In Love, 1961

In 2024, the world fell ever more in love with Dubai: its Bling, its buildings, and its…chocolate? If you’re one of the few who hasn’t tried ‘Dubai Chocolate’ then you missed one of the top 5 food trends of 2024, according to Google Trends. The mix of pistachios, knafeh, and chocolate, selling out its daily supply from a humble shop in the newly hip JLT by 4:03pm every afternoon on Deliveroo, “Fix!” chocolate was a viral hit to suit Dubai’s explosive growth as both a city and a global brand in 2024. We find it curious that Fix’s Google Trend trajectory moved closely with that of Emaar Properties’ stock price, which reached a 15 year high at the end of 2024, following the announcement of a long awaited, more generous, dividend policy. As we look around a DIFC thronged with ever more transplanted Londoners, Parisians, New Yorkers, and Singaporeans, it’s hard not to marvel at the speed of Dubai’s transformation seemingly accelerating each year from regional hub to global “it” destination.

THE ARABIAN DREAM

You may say I’m a dreamer / But I’m not the only one

John Lennon. Lyrics to Imagine, 1971

Immortal words from a travelling Brit, who found global fame 60 years ago in America, now engraved in Central Park. And yet after our recent visit to the US in January 2025, it appears that the American Dream of self-made prosperity in a society of strivers united in their pursuit of growth is alive and well in…Dubai. Inauguration speeches aside, the spot on the world map most open to big new ideas and crucially to legal migration of immigrants of all stripes (whether they be hedge fund managers in Patagonia jackets or hedge trimmers in Salwar Kameez) lies 6,500 miles east of Washington, DC.  

Now in its third year of rapid population growth, a concurrent explosion in FDI, and a pyramid of 10-year Golden Visas as high as the Burj Khalifa, Dubai is experiencing a wave of economic development larger than any before witnessed by the Emirate, and far more broad-based. The city we call home has never felt more vibrant, with comparisons today no longer limited to Vegas or Disney Land, but understandably to Singapore, Miami and LA…the latter comparison unfortunately has also meant that traffic has quickly become residents’ main gripe! Record real estate prices, record school wait lists, record breaking flows of tourists and capital combined to make 2024 a truly “American Dream” sort of year on Sheikh Zayed Road.

To their credit, the technocrats that govern Dubai have not shied away from investing into this tidal wave of growth with close to USD 1 billion in planned infrastructure projects ranging from new roads to new metro lines to a storm drainage system to prevent the chaos of April 2024’s flooding from re-occurring. Simultaneously they have refined VARA, their pathbreaking virtual assets regulatory framework, while welcoming over 60 hedge fund managers to the DIFC. From ~USD 100 billion in AUM managed out of the DIFC in 2010, by the end of 2024, over USD 1 trillion is assets is now managed from the DIFC, while a further USD 1 trillion in assets is managed out of the ADGM in Abu Dhabi. Simultaneously, 20 years after opening the market to foreign ownership, the Dubai real estate market reached AED 1 trillion in off plan (new construction) residential property sales in 2024. Residential stock in the UAE tripled over the past 2 decades, and current units under construction will push the residential stock past 1 million homes in the next 3-4 years.

Since 2004, AED 1 TRILLION (USD 275 billion) of primary residential real estate has sold in Dubai; 40% of this value created since 2023. Offplan sales are conducted largely on a cash installment basis. An incredible valuation creation machine.

As we enter 2025, Dubai is a global city built with infrastructure that encourages shared prosperity and consensus building over identity politics. It is an imagined community built first on an economic contract, and secondarily on a social one that sees the limits of behaviour as “live freely, and don’t be a menace.” International law, financial transparency, an increasingly vigorous regulatory oversight mechanism, and the unshackling of knowledge workers from their employers with Golden Visas and Freeholder Visas kicked off a wave of entrepreneurship, innovation, and experimentation that seems to grow only larger and more powerful with each month that passes.

The turbocharged growth in Dubai is reminiscent of 1950s and 1960s Postwar America, when the American Dream was born and when the nation reaped the benefits of the massive investments in infrastructure and industrial organisation required during the World Wars alongside the social infrastructure spending of the Great Depression. What characterised that period of “Peak American Dream” in the US (besides some really excellent music) was massive premiumisation of consumption: refrigerators, colour TVs, giant cars, 2 car garages, time saving gadgets…the parallels to the premiumisation of consumption in Dubai today are obvious, with food delivery (Talabat), gasoline delivery (Cafu), instant entertainment (Shahid streaming), and an explosion of financial services to improve the flow of funds both domestically and globally. New services are seemingly added every day to reduce consumption friction and increase leisure time. Dare we say that Dubai’s Just Life app (a home services app that provides everything from plumbers to doctors to your home in 30 minutes) is the Hoover vacuum of 2025?

The parallels are strong enough to inspire our musical choices for this newsletter. Please enjoy the linked playlist on Spotify: Ajeej 2025 Arabian Dream Playlist

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