Dubai is over?

That’s what they said in 2008. 2020. 2024

I have been here for nearly a decade. Came like most of us do, chasing opportunity, building something, figuring it out. An Indian kid with big ambitions, not many guarantees. And over the years, I have watched Dubai become the most interesting city in the world for people like me.

Every few months, something comes along that’s supposed to shake the confidence. And every single time, I watch people declare this is finally the moment it all unravels.

It never does.

So let me tell you what actually happened the last three times everyone said Dubai was finished.

2008 Global financial crisis: Dubai’s real estate collapsed. Debt piled up. The narrative was brutal. Within weeks, they injected liquidity into banks, guaranteed deposits, and recapitalized the financial system. Abu Dhabi stepped in with $20 billion. Dubai restructured, diversified, and within two years was growing again. The city came back stronger.

2020 COVID: The UAE deployed a $70 billion stimulus package, deferred bank loan payments for six months, and cut utility bills for entire business sectors. While most governments were still debating lockdown policy, Dubai launched a remote work visa to attract global talent and reopened tourism before almost any major city in the world. The city ended the pandemic with more residents than it started with.

2024 The floods: A year’s worth of rain fell in 24 hours. The heaviest rainfall in 75 years. Highways turned into rivers, the world’s busiest international airport ground to a halt. Videos went viral globally and the narrative was instant: Dubai isn’t built for this. Dubai is over. Within days, roads were cleared, the airport was fully operational, damaged homes were being repaired. Then, 70 days later, the government approved the Tasreef project – an AED 30 billion rainwater drainage network designed to increase the city’s drainage capacity by 700%.

Three crises. Three recoveries. All faster than anyone predicted.

Now we are in the middle of another moment that’s supposed to be the final one. And I am watching the same conversation restart, same tone, same certainty, same conclusion – Dubai is over. There is no coming back.

Dubai has never pretended to be perfect. But it has built something harder to replicate – a city that is genuinely neutral ground. In a world where East and West are constantly pulling apart, Dubai sits in the middle and says: come do business here. And they mean it. The policies follow. The infrastructure follows. The speed follows.

The question isn’t whether a place faces crises. Every place does. The question is how fast it gets back up. I have watched this government respond to crises faster than most startups would. That’s by design.