Dubai takes second place in global intelligent cities index, first in AI adoption

Dubai has placed second overall in the Intelligent Cities Index, a first-time ranking from Boston Consulting Group that assessed 61 cities in 39 countries. The emirate also finished first in the index's adoption category, which measures how far cities have pushed AI and smart digital services into everyday use.

The index scores cities across five domains: Outcomes, Strategy, Adoption, Ways of Working and Enablers. Those are broken down into 35 indicators spanning 14 dimensions of digital transformation. The intent is to show how effectively a city turns technology into sustainable development and competitive standing.

Adoption produced the strongest results of any domain in the study. Dubai's score there reflects the spread of AI applications and digital services across sectors, and it helped place the emirate among the most digitally mature cities in the assessment.

Turning tools into services

Hamad Obaid Al Mansoori, director general of Digital Dubai, attributed the result to a digital ecosystem built on shared infrastructure and data, with government entities and the private sector working together. That setup, he said, is what allows new technology to become working services rather than pilots.

"In Dubai, AI is more than an emerging technology, it is a catalyst for improving quality of life, simplifying services and enabling economic growth," Al Mansoori said. "We will continue investing in shared digital infrastructure while expanding the use of data and AI across all sectors."

Khalfan Juma Belhoul, chief executive of the Dubai Future Foundation, made a similar point about how leadership in this field should be judged. The measure is not the count of technologies a city has picked up, he said, but whether those tools improve productivity and open new areas for growth. He described the city's approach as combining research and development, regulation that can move quickly, and partnerships across sectors.

What the index found about AI leaders

Cities that put AI at the centre of how they operate, rather than treating it as a support function, saw faster and more durable gains in quality of life and service delivery, according to the study. Those cities also tended to have a wider set of real-world AI use cases and higher resident satisfaction.

The research further pointed to a relationship between how often people use generative AI tools and how much they trust the technology. Frequent users reported more confidence and held more positive views about the role it will play. Cities in the Middle East, Dubai among them, showed notably strong appetite for adopting and applying AI.

Dubai's second-place finish overall sits behind the top-ranked city in a field of 61, with the adoption score carrying the emirate's strongest showing.