Khalifa City

Khalifa City is where Abu Dhabi families go for space. It sits on the mainland between the island and the airport and delivers more floor area and more garden per dirham than anywhere else within a reasonable commute of the city. Tenants are large households, teachers, and mid-career professionals working at the airport, at Masdar or on the island who decided that a fifth bedroom and a garden mattered more than an address. It is not a master plan, and that is the honest caveat: it grew block by block, so street condition, villa quality and landscaping vary sharply from one road to the next, there is no single developer accountable for the public realm, and some villas have been subdivided into separate tenancies that the floor plan will not show you. There is no promenade and no centre — retail is strip units on the arterials, and every errand is a drive.