EVOLUTION OF DUBAI | 3D CITY TIMELAPSE (1950–2026)

Watch Dubai grow from a working creek town to the skyline of 2026: pearl divers' dhows, the first bridge, the ports, one tower alone on a desert road, islands built from the sea, the world's tallest building, the 2009 crash, the Metro, Expo, the 2024 flood and the New Year 2026 fireworks. Every building stands on its real footprint, and the coastline follows satellite observations year by year. 0:00 Dubai today 0:10 1833: the creek settlement 0:25 1951: the old town 0:40 1959: dredging the creek 0:58 1963: the first bridge 1:16 1972: Port Rashid 1:34 1979: one tower on the desert road 1:52 1979: Jebel Ali port 2:12 1985: Emirates takes off 2:29 1999: Burj Al Arab 2:49 2000: Emirates Towers 3:07 2001: Palm Jumeirah rises from the sea 3:34 2003: Dubai Marina 3:54 2004: Burj Dubai's foundations 4:14 2005: Ski Dubai 4:30 2007: the first Palm residents 4:49 2007: Burj Dubai climbs 5:21 2008: The World and Atlantis 5:41 2008: the boom stalls 6:02 2009: the Metro opens 6:21 2010: Burj Khalifa opens 6:43 2012: Marina towers 7:00 2016: the Dubai Canal 7:18 2021: Expo 2020 7:38 2022: Museum of the Future 7:56 2024: One Za'abeel and the flood 8:12 The fountains and New Year 2026 How it was made: no AI imagery and no real footage. The city is built in code from open map data and rendered in Blender. Buildings: today's footprints from OpenStreetMap and Overture Maps. Towers take their height and completion date from published records; ordinary buildings take an estimated year from satellite settlement layers and district history, and an estimated height where none is mapped. Facades, windows and rooftops are generated, not surveyed. Towers that were still being built on 1 January 2026 appear as they stood then: a partial frame or a construction site. Proposed and cancelled towers do not appear. Coastline: annual satellite water maps from 1984 to 2021 (JRC Global Surface Water). The shore before 1984, the stages of each island and the digging of the Marina, Business Bay and the Canal are reconstructed from their documented dates. The old town before 1960 is approximate: few buildings from then survive, so its houses are a reconstruction. Boats, cars, trains, planes, cranes and people are representative, not a record of real traffic. The flood is shown as local standing water, not a measured flood map. The fountains and fireworks are our own choreography. Population is Dubai Emirate residents from official statistics (Dubai Statistics Center), rounded; the last figure is about 4.58 million, end of 2025. Sources Building footprints and the coastline: © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL. openstreetmap.org/copyright Buildings: Overture Maps Foundation, release 2026-09-23.1, ODbL. overturemaps.org Coastline 1984-2021: EC JRC / Google, Global Surface Water (Pekel et al., 2016). global-surface-water.appspot.com Settlement growth: World Settlement Footprint Evolution, © DLR 2021, CC BY 4.0. geoservice.dlr.de Terrain: Copernicus DEM GLO-30, © DLR e.V. 2010-2014 and © Airbus Defence and Space GmbH 2014-2018, provided under COP-DEM GLO-30 Public licence. spacedata.copernicus.eu Tower heights and dates: Wikidata (CC0) and Wikipedia contributors, checked against owners' and architects' published figures. Population: Dubai Statistics Center. dsc.gov.ae Dates of events: Government of Dubai Media Office, Dubai Municipality, Dubai Protocol, RTA, Emirates, Nakheel and Emaar announcements. Music: Breathing Planet by Doug Maxwell, Timelapsed Tides by Asher Fulero, Magical Triumph by Sir Cubworth (YouTube Audio Library); Kayak, Nebula and Laniakea by The Grey Room. City sounds and effects are made in code. Which city should we build next? Tell us in the comments. #dubai #timelapse #burjkhalifa