MBR City

Infrastructure 2 min read

Dh2.1 trillion of projects are under way in Dubai, and Dh1.1 trillion of it is housing

Eight cut-paper blocks of different widths stacked into one tall column, the widest at the base, on a warm grey ground

At the Mohammed bin Rashid Leadership Forum at Dubai World Trade Centre on 13 October 2026, the Ruler of Dubai put a figure on everything the city is building at once: Dh2.1 trillion.

The list

Dh1.1 trillion of real estate to 2030, about 350,000 homes. Dh128 billion for Al Maktoum International Airport, built for 260 million passengers. Dh328 billion in aircraft on order. Dh18.7 billion for Emirates' engineering centre. Dh100 billion for roads and the Metro Blue and Gold lines. Dh151 billion for power and water. Dh80 billion for the deep sewerage tunnels. Dh100 billion for DIFC Phase 2.

Where MBR City sits in it

The district is inside three of these lines. The housing total includes the villa and apartment phases still being built at Meydan, Sobha Hartland and District One. The Gold Line is planned to run through the district; the Al Meydan Street rebuild is part of the roads budget. The sewerage tunnels pass under it.

What the number is for

It is a statement of intent made to the city's leadership, not a budget line; the individual projects have their own contracts and their own dates, and several, the airport among them, run past 2030.

The figure to hold on to is 350,000 homes by 2030, because it is the one that sets prices. Dubai delivered roughly a tenth of that a year in its best recent years, so the number implies the pace of completions doubling, and most of the land that can take it at scale is south of Al Khail Road: MBR City, Dubailand and the Expo corridor. A buyer in the district should read the housing line as supply, the roads line as the thing that keeps the district reachable while it arrives, and the airport line as the reason the city expects the demand to come.

Source: The National checked against the source

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