Page 70 - Enhancing innovation and participation in smart sustainable cities

United for Smart Sustainable Cities
Enhancing Innovation and Participation

1 Introduction

1.1 Background

Dubai is one of the seven emirates that constitute the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It is the most populous city
and emirate, with a gross domestic product of USD 82 billion.

Over the last 40 years, Dubai has succeeded in transforming itself into a global city, regional business centre and
tourism hub. Dubai has successfully established its international reputation of being an economic and investment
centre, attracting several international companies that have set up their regional headquarters in the Emirate’s
many free zones. The Emirate of Dubai has been able to achieve this success by diversifying its gross domestic
product through accelerated development in sectors such as tourism, real estate, retail, travel and logistics. It has
also been recognized for attracting skilled talent from around the world.
Underlying this economic growth has been a visionary, strong and productive government sector that has
embraced technology and committed to excellence and digital city transformation. The city’s technological
journey began in 1999 with the announcement of its first ICT strategy, which was followed by the launch of Dubai
Internet City, Dubai e-government, Dubai Smart Government and the Dubai Smart Office (see Figure 10).
Today, Dubai is amongst the world’s leading smart cities in its adoption of new technology and pioneering of
innovative smart pilots. Recognizing the potential impact of the blockchain technology on city services, coupled
with a worldwide blockchain adoption trend that saw $1.1 billion invested by the private sector in blockchain
technology in 2016 alone, Dubai launched a citywide blockchain strategy in October 2016 with the objective of
becoming the first blockchain powered city by 2020.

Figure 11 Dubai’s technological journey

68 U4SSC series