Numbers and letters swarm across the screen, flickering with restless urgency, their patterns cryptic yet hypnotic. A ceaseless current of data, shifting, pulsing, reforming. The screen hums with their movement. To the watching eyes, the meaning of this tide of luminous digits is at first unclear. What is this sea of shifting symbols? Algorithms? Sensor readings? Gradually, the mystery reveals itself. Coordinates. The screen settles on one: N25°08’02’’, E55°11’14”. The city of Dubai.

Such is the experience for visitors to ‘Directions (Merging)’, the digital art installation commissioned by Julius Baer for Art Dubai 2025. Created by prominent Emirati artist Mohammed Kazem, the work speaks to the movement of people, the seamless exchange of resources, the fluidity of nature, and the interconnectedness of distant shores. Kazem’s work also draws the visitors to converge around it – creating a microcosm of the city and the fair. The viewer is surrounded by three walls containing a collection of static coordinates lining every inch, placed against the backdrop of a moving waves video, highlighting the feeling of merger and border transcendence, aligning seamlessly with wealth migration into Dubai and its growth and development as a future city.

Growth engines of the global economy

As part of his role as Head of Next Generation Research at Julius Baer, Carsten Menke explores what types of innovation are helping future cities like Dubai become more sustainable and liveable – and what this means for investors. He says that, while it may seem counterintuitive, people in cities leave a smaller resource footprint than those in the countryside. “Cities are economic powerhouses, accounting for more than 80% of global economic output while housing only around 55% of the population,” says Carsten. “The density and the dynamics of cities allow trends to form faster and new technologies to be implemented more efficiently, because you have a bigger market that you can address at once.”

Expo City Dubai provides a focal point for breakthrough trends and ideas for citizens, businesses, startups and entrepreneurs in sectors such as sustainability and technology. It aims to create a positive impact by integrating environmental, social and economic sustainability at every step of its development, from efficient and accessible building designs and operations, to learning experiences that empower future generations.

“We’re an urban laboratory,” explains Nadia Verjee, Executive Director, Global Initiatives and Advisory Expo City Dubai. “We’re finding our own pain points, looking at ways in which to address major challenges, and testing solutions on ourselves.” After hosting COP27 in 2023, this ‘city within a city’ now provides homes, offices, events venues and amenities, as well as lots of green spaces, smart transportation and future-proof infrastructure. “Expo City provides a proof of concept that a lot of these initiatives to create a nature positive city can be replicated across the city of Dubai, because the conditions are very similar.” 

Once the full masterplan is rolled out, Expo City Dubai will welcome more than 35,000 residents and 40,000 professionals, who are already moving into the city.

Walking the talk through greener urban mobility

Mobility is a central theme of Kazem’s installation at Art Dubai 2025. The movement of people and goods is key to enhancing productivity and liveability in cities. “Expo City Dubai is pedestrianised, but we face a familiar mobility issue because of rising heat, with people unable to go outside for six months of the year,” says Nadia. Feeding into Dubai’s wider ‘green spine’ planning, Expo City Dubai has put measures in place for a more comfortable and attainable public realm experience. “It’s four degrees cooler here than in the rest of Dubai because of the nature-positive solutions that we’ve put in place and the vernacular architecture we’ve built.” 

Dubai’s city authorities are looking at ways to integrate similar solutions across the rest of the city. As part of the Dubai 2040 Urban Master Plan, for example, the city has launched its own walkability initiative, with plans to double the size of green and recreational areas as well as ensure that 55 per cent of the city’s population live within 800 metres of a main public transport station.

Human-first approach to development

In recent years, Dubai has been assembling the world’s largest solar park and investing substantially in creating a state-of-the-art city through technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence. While these technologies play a crucial role in making our cities smarter and more sustainable, the tagline of Mohammed Kazem’s art installation, ‘Connecting communities; dissolving boundaries’ also speaks to the social component of creating future cities. 

However, prioritising people’s happiness isn’t solely about introducing new technology. “It’s equally important to be socially smart, which is more about figuring out what the city’s pain points are and then addressing them, with or without the use of technology.”

“Smart cities are those that prioritise human well-being, which improve quality of life and drive the creation of social value,” says Nadia. “It’s not just about the built environment, but also community engagement.” This has led to a shift in the way Dubai’s decision-makers approach new building projects. “Over the years, I’ve been involved in discussions with city planners and policymakers around the question of how to build,” says Nadia. “We’ve moved from thinking about building in a purely physical sense to considering them much more holistically, in terms of what each building is contributing to the local environment.”

Turning data into action

The digits that flash up on the screen in the ‘Directions (Merging)’ art installation point to the importance of Big Data in supporting cities’ moves to become more sustainable. Data generated by cameras and sensors across the city’s infrastructure – its transportation arteries, water and waste pipes and electricity lines – is crunched by computers to transform statistics into actions that benefit citizens.

This collection of data throws up many questions, from privacy and cybersecurity to ownership and storage. Without a clear framework, cities risk creating digital divides and surveillance-heavy environments instead of truly liveable urban spaces. 

Nadia explains that the strategy behind Expo City Dubai involves questioning critically which data they’re using and why. “We’ve created an urban framework that uses 131 metrics based on publicly available data, public sentiment data and satellite data to really understand what it takes to measure the health of the city,” she says. “For us, the real purpose of gathering data is to design project interventions efficiently. We can use the data to determine whether the interventions we’re making are those needed to improve people’s lives, to create a built environment of quality that’s enabling for the communities that live in it.” 

Trust is key to unlocking quality of life

Nadia believes that creating trust in the city’s use of technology and data to create sustainable outcomes is also a question of consistency. “The more measures and metrics we have put in place, the deeper the trust between the citizens and the government,” she says. “We recently conducted a poll on this with experts on the topic of intergenerational equity – how to create a more equitable and sustainable world for people of all ages. The poll found that the UAE ranked very highly in terms of trust in governance. If you adopt policies and practises systematically, you can really change an entire nation.”

This raising of awareness among visitors is crucial to creating change that lasts. “At a national level, there’s a lot of top-down decision-making that by definition does not necessarily meet a specific city’s needs, whereas at a city level, decisions tend to be made bottom-up and are much more tailor-made,” says Carsten. “Expo City Dubai shows that nicely. As visitors become more aware of what sustainable urban life means, they’re more likely to make sustainable choices with conviction – whether it’s choosing electric mobility or retrofitting their homes for better insulation – than they would if they were told what to do by the government without properly understanding why.”

Building on a sense of community

In keeping with the theme of Julius Baer’s commissioned art installation, and like the majority of Dubai’s citizens, Nadia changed coordinates by moving to Dubai from overseas 16 years ago. How has she, personally, experienced Dubai’s evolution into a future city? “I see a transformation in the psychology of the city. It’s much more sophisticated, much more mature, and it really understands the role that it wants to play in the world. If I could sum it up, I’d say it’s moved from being a place that imported ideas to one that exports them.” 

How does she envision the Dubai cityscape in the years ahead? “I think what’s really interesting is that 2025 is the year of community in the UAE, so there’s a huge focus on the relationship that we have with the places that we’re building. Based on the decisions being made now on what we’re going to build in the next 10 to 15 years, I think the focus will really be on sustainable development, on community well-being, and on economic prosperity. And that’s why you’re seeing so many people move into the city as well. The emphasis really is on quality of life. It can’t really be any other way.”