Why Dubai is the Best City to Live in the World?

An alluring blend of over-the-top experiences, Arab heritage and luxury shopping, Dubai is so over the pandemic.

POPULATION METRO: 6,595,000

World Rank:

PLACE: 1

PEOPLE: 1

This city has it all. Home to over 200 nationalities, accessible from anywhere in the world. Dubai boasts pristine beaches, rich Arab oriental heritage with charming Bedouin tradition all wrapped in five-star luxury living. High-end shopping, dining and entertainment are complemented by year-round sunshine and safe family-friendly environment. With such ease of doing business, stable economy and tax-free status. It is one of the world’s favorite destinations for tourists, investors and expats.

Dubai is a city of superlatives: you can ride the elevator to the top of the world’s tallest building for a bird’s-eye view, bet on the ponies at the world’s richest horse race and pose for photos in front of the world’s tallest choreographed fountains. These experiences are not by accident: the city reinvented itself yet again throughout the 2010s, growing from a sterile playground for a handful of ultra-rich Emiratis to an international tourism and business destination. That has helped attract the highest proportion of the foreign-born population of any city worldwide, and they’re a sharp crowd, ranking #23 for Educational Attainment globally.

Dubai’s next challenge will be not blowing its post-COVID-19 reopening by doing too much too fast. Dubai is hoping to bring back the tourists (16.7 million in 2019) who have become critical to its economy and has spent its downtime building and recalibrating in a velocity unprecedented even for this Energizer Bunny of a metropolis.

The most visited mall on the planet is already here and helps Dubai climb to #32 in our Shopping subcategory, a year-over-year drop of six spots. It would be a mistake to focus on the “mall” part of the name, however; like the city itself, the Dubai Mall is more of an attempt to capture every human experience and repackage it for consumption. It has the aforementioned world’s tallest tower, the Burj Khalifa, and one of the largest aquarium tanks anywhere. The city’s reinvention goes on through Cityland Mall, the world’s first “nature-inspired” shopping mall, opened in 2019 and packed with botanical touches, including 200,000 square feet of open-air gardens.

Likewise, the Burj Khalifa’s time in the sun may be nearing an end: Santiago Calatrava’s Tower at Dubai Creek will eclipse the skyscraper as the tallest building in the world when completed, in 2022 at the earliest. More certain for the city is Expo 2020 (to take place, in fact, in 2022), a multibillion-dollar half-year fair aiming to draw 25 million visitors. Nearly 200 nations will be showcased at the pavilions, adorned, like Italy’s 3D-printed David by Michelangelo, with cultural celebrations of the future ahead.

Speaking of the future, the city’s sensory overload of a Museum of the Future should also be completed later this year, providing more magnetism to a place eager for it post-lockdown. And joining the world’s tallest building is the world’s tallest Ferris wheel, and, for the family, a new John Wick roller coaster, part of the Motiongate Dubai theme park.

Visitors will also have plenty of new choices to sleep in style, notably at the St. Regis Dubai, The Palm, on the city’s network of man-made islands. And lest you eschew it as an environment-modifying monstrosity, be cool: it has its own monorail station that whisks guests directly downtown. Also new is the 795-room Atlantis The Royal, with restaurants from celebrity chefs Ariana Bundy and José Andrés that will improve Dubai’s already impressive Top 20 global ranking for Restaurants.

That all this economic development and influx of new residents has allowed Dubai to rank as the planet’s safest city is truly astonishing.

Now, if only those drones the city is launching to zap clouds into producing much-needed rain would work so well.