JUMEIRAH CENTRAL, DUBAI

Jumeirah Central was conceived as a new city district in the heart of Dubai, a 400-acre, USD 20 billion urban regeneration programme anchored around a 4.5 million m², award-winning masterplan. Envisioned as the region’s first truly mixed-use, public-transport-oriented city centre, the plan brought together residential neighbourhoods, commercial districts, hospitality destinations and civic amenities within a highly connected framework. Its intent was to create an accessible, human-scaled urban fabric of walkable blocks and multimodal movement, establishing a vibrant district capable of sustaining activity and value throughout the day and year.

Alongside its placemaking ambitions, Jumeirah Central was mandated as a strategic tool for economic diversification, designed to attract long-term institutional capital, introduce new investment structures to the market and set new benchmarks for transparency, governance and quality. The programme was structured as a multi-decade development, integrating infrastructure, transit, sustainability, public realm and commercial outcomes into a single coordinated city-scale initiative.

Our Role at Jumeirah Central

In a previous capacity, one of our founders served as Head of Development, Design and Delivery for Jumeirah Central, as part of the project’s senior leadership team. This role included recruiting and leading the full development, design and delivery organisation; shaping the vision for the district; and managing the implementation of the detailed masterplanning process to create a new urban fabric. Responsibilities extended to securing approvals from 13 government agencies and ministerial bodies, establishing the master development framework for a programme spanning more than 20 years, and introducing foreign direct investment into the project.

The role also encompassed delivery of Phase One’s infrastructure and public realm design across 23 of the 75 city blocks, together with pre-development and investment analysis for 20 individual projects with a combined development cost of AED 3 billion. In parallel, the team led the domestic and international public launch of the project, positioning Jumeirah Central as a benchmark for mixed-use urban planning and a catalyst for inward institutional investment in Dubai.