City time series
Dubai's urban expansion: 1975–2025, built-up area 2.7×
- United Arab Emirates
- GHSL epochs 1975–2025
At a glance
- Dubai's built-up area grew from about 73.0 km² in 1975 to 198 km² in 2025 — 2.7× the 1975 footprint, or +2.0% per year compounded.
- Over the same window the urban centre's population 18×, reaching about 4.6M by 2025.
- The current footprint of 198 km² is equivalent to about 58 Central Parks.
Key growth numbers
- Built-up area 2.7× +2.0% per year since 1975
- Population 18× about 4.6M in 2025
- GHSL epochs 11 five-year steps, no interpolation
Dubai: population and built-up area, epoch by epoch
Dubai
Data table
| Epoch | Population | Built-up km² |
|---|---|---|
| 1975 | 252.1K | 73.0 km² |
| 1980 | 432.1K | 78.3 km² |
| 1985 | 595.1K | 84.9 km² |
| 1990 | 807.3K | 92.4 km² |
| 1995 | 1.1M | 117 km² |
| 2000 | 1.6M | 152 km² |
| 2005 | 2.2M | 161 km² |
| 2010 | 3M | 173 km² |
| 2015 | 3.8M | 185 km² |
| 2020 | 4.3M | 194 km² |
| 2025 | 4.6M | 198 km² |
Method & data
All numbers come from the GHS Urban Centre Database (GHSL): the European Commission's Joint Research Centre publishes, for every urban centre on Earth, the total built-up area and resident population on five-year epochs from 1975 to 2025.
An epoch is a full mapping pass, not an estimate for that calendar year; a metric the source does not report for an epoch is shown as missing — values are never interpolated or extrapolated between epochs.
The numbers stay inside the GHSL Urban Centre boundary — a stable, data-derived footprint of the contiguous built-up core, not an administrative city limit; figures are therefore not comparable to city-proper census counts.
A night-lights curve (VIIRS) is planned as a second series and is not part of this page yet; the epoch table above is the complete published dataset for this city.
Frequently asked questions
How much has Dubai grown between 1975 and 2025?
Dubai's built-up area expanded 2.7× — from roughly 73.0 km² to 198 km² inside the GHSL urban-centre boundary.
How many people live in Dubai as of 2025?
The GHSL epoch for 2025 reports about 4.6M people inside Dubai's urban centre.
Where do these numbers come from?
From the GHS Urban Centre Database (GHSL), published free and openly by the European Commission — see the method section above for the epoch semantics.
Related pages
United Arab Emirates country profile: key metrics vs world median →
Other cities
Data & method
GHS Urban Centre Database R2024A, European Commission Joint Research Centre (CC BY 4.0); built-up area and population per five-year epoch, consumed unmodified from the tabular release.
City outline: the GHSL urban-centre boundary, simplified for display — illustrative, not a navigable boundary.