Dubai Sports City

Dubai Sports City is one of the few districts here built around a single idea and then actually finished to it. A cricket stadium, a golf course, and academies for cricket, football and tennis sit inside the plan rather than beside it, and the residential blocks are arranged around them. The result is a neighbourhood where the open space belongs to the district instead of to whichever tower paid for it.

It sits on Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed Road, inland and to the south, with Motor City on one side and the studio district on the other. That position is the trade the buyer is making: the beach is a drive rather than a walk, and in exchange the same money buys considerably more floor area than it would nearer the water.

Stock is mid-rise apartments, with villas in the golf community that sits inside the same boundary. A primary school, a university campus and a hospital are all within the district or on its edge.

It suits a buyer who wants a finished neighbourhood with something at its centre, and who would rather pay for space and a short walk to a pitch than for a view.