NOOMA Properties
Dubai

Dubai Design District.

The least finished district we track, by a distance. Of 151 registered plots, twelve are complete — and one of the empty ones is permitted to 64 storeys.

The plot register

How much of Dubai Design District is actually built.

The register records 151 plots here. 12 are complete — 8% — and 125 are empty. Among the plots that are not finished, 62 carry a height permission, and the tallest of those may reach 64 storeys.

  • Completed 12
  • Under Construction 7
  • Pre-Construction 7
  • Empty 125

The tallest thing that could still go up

On a plot with nothing finished on it today.

Permitted height
64 storeys G+63
Current status
Empty
Plot
3372398

How to read this

  • Permitted is not planned. A height limit is what a plot is allowed to become. Nothing has to be built, and what is built need not reach the limit.
  • Empty means no structure is recorded. Not that work is about to start, and not that the plot is for sale.
  • Counted by the register’s own district name, not by a rectangle drawn on a map. A box around a neighbourhood picks up its neighbours’ plots and produces confident, wrong numbers.

Source: Dubai Development Authority plot register (BASIC_LAND_BASE), district DUBAI DESIGN DISTRICT. Retrieved 6 August 2026.

What d3 is

A creative-industry district beside the Ras Al Khor road, built as a home for design, fashion and art businesses. What exists today is a small cluster of low mid-rise buildings around a waterfront promenade, and the atmosphere of a place that is deliberately unfinished.

That atmosphere is not a phase. It is the current state of a masterplan with most of its land still open.

Almost none of it is built

Twelve plots complete out of 151, with 125 empty and another fourteen under construction or in pre-construction. Sixty-two unfinished plots carry a height permission.

Anyone buying here is buying into a plan rather than a place, and the register is the most honest description of that plan available. The tallest permission on an empty plot is 64 storeys, which is a different d3 to the low-rise one people visit today.

Before you buy here

Ask us what is permitted on the plot next door.

For a specific building we will read the register around it — what stands there now, what is under construction, and what height the empty plots are permitted to reach. It takes us minutes and it is the question that decides whether a view is a feature or a temporary condition.

Ask about a building
Dubai Design District

Straight answers.

How much of Dubai Design District is built?
Very little. The Dubai Development Authority's plot register records 151 plots in d3, of which twelve are recorded as complete and 125 as empty, with seven under construction and seven in pre-construction. That is eight per cent built, the lowest of any district we track.
How tall can they build in d3?
The tallest permission we can find on a plot with nothing on it is G+63 — sixty-four levels — and that plot is recorded as empty. Sixty-two unfinished plots in the district carry a height permission of some kind. Permitted is not planned: a limit is what a plot is allowed to become, not something anyone has announced. But the low-rise district you can walk around today is not what the register describes.
Should I buy in Dubai Design District?
It depends entirely on your horizon. You are buying into a masterplan whose land is overwhelmingly undeveloped, which means years of construction and a skyline that is not settled. If you want the finished version, this is not the district that has one yet.
What does property cost in d3?
We do not publish an area average, because we do not yet hold verified transaction data we would stand behind. Ask us about a specific building and we will get you the recorded comparables instead of a number that flatters whatever we are selling.