Dubai: When a city becomes a verb

Only a handful of brands have entered the language as verbs. Google it. Uber it. Cities do not usually get that privilege. Until June 17, 2026, when His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, launched 'Dubai-it' and gave the world a new definition: to achieve something extraordinary with excellence in record time. This is a city that has spent decades being described, analysed, doubted, praised, and misread by everyone else. Now it is defining itself, on its own terms, in its own language, and handing the world a new concept to use. The world still tends to treat Dubai’s transformation as spectacle. A skyline, a headline, a record-breaking structure. What it misses is the system behind it. The skyline is often mistaken for the story. It is actually the evidence. Emirates Airline launched in 1985 with two aircraft and ten million dollars. Four decades later, it is the world’s most profitable airline. Dubai International Airport processed 95.2 million passengers in 2025. The Dubai Metro, which opened at 9 minutes and 9 seconds past 9pm on 09/09/09, carried 294.7 million riders last year. More than 95 per cent of Dubai’s GDP is non-oil, an economy more diversified than countries that have had centuries to figure it out. When the 2008 financial crisis hit, Dubai was building the tallest structure in human history. Analysts expected it to be abandoned. Instead, the Burj Khalifa was inaugurated on January 4, 2010. When Covid-19 shut the world down, Dubai reopened to tourism within three months and went on to host Expo 2020, welcoming more than 24 million visits from 192 countries. In Dubai, uncertainty rarely pauses execution. This is what “Dubai-it” codifies. Speed with precision. Ambition backed by execution. “Speed does not mean haste. Quality does not mean slowness. Ambition has no value without execution.” There is a reason this matters beyond branding. Cities across Asia, Africa and Latin America have studied elements of Dubai’s model, from free zones and aviation strategy to city branding and investment attraction. What many can replicate is the structure. What remains harder to replicate is the culture behind it. What those cities borrow is the output. What “Dubai-it” names is the input, the methodology, the operating system behind every result the world can see. The timing is deliberate. Dubai’s GDP reached AED 937 billion in 2025. The D33 agenda aims to double the economy by 2033 through 100 transformational projects. The UAE’s non-oil foreign trade exceeded one trillion dollars for the first time last year. These targets are being hit while a regional conflict tests every system the country has built. “Dubai-it,” or “Dubai Al Af’al” in Arabic, is designed to codify a culture and transfer it to future generations, embedded across institutions and companies as a framework for how Dubai operates and intends to operate for decades to come. “Our motto has always been: we say what we do, and we do what we say.” That line, from the leader who turned a creek town into a global powerhouse, is perhaps the shortest summary of a model the rest of the world is still trying to reverse-engineer. Most cities compete on infrastructure, tax policy, or location. Dubai competes on philosophy, and packages that philosophy for export. Most cities leave landmarks. A few leave ideas. Dubai may become one of the rare places that leaves a verb. (Naoufer Ramoul is a senior TV presenter and producer at Dubai Media Incorporated, and the host of the award-winning political show Qabel lil Niqash on Dubai TV. She has worked as a presenter at Al Jazeera, Al Arabiya and Alhurra.)