Sources, licences and method
This site invents no data: every listing comes from an open database, cited and reusable. Here is which, and how each is handled.
Sources used
| Source | Used for | Licence |
|---|---|---|
| OpenStreetMap | The directory’s points of interest: names, addresses, coordinates, opening hours, contacts. | ODbL 1.0 |
| Wikidata | City statistics: population, area, elevation, twin towns. | CC0 1.0 |
| RTA GTFS (Dubai Pulse) | RTA bus, tram and marine lines (abras, water buses, ferries) in Dubai: numbers, termini, routes, colours and stops, with their Arabic names. | RTA open data |
| Wikipedia (French) | Encyclopaedic summaries introducing each city. | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
| Wikimedia Commons | City views, monument photographs and brand logos, with the author credited beneath each image. | Public domain, CC0, CC BY, CC BY-SA |
Method
Points of interest are extracted from OpenStreetMap through the Overpass API, one commune and one category at a time. Each extraction is kept as it came, then normalised: names typed in capitals are reformatted, phone numbers converted to international form, each venue attached to its nearest neighbourhood, and duplicates within 120 metres under an identical name removed.
A listing earns its own page only if it carries something useful — an address, a phone number, opening hours, a website or a description. The rest stay visible in the lists without a page of their own: an honest list beats an empty page.
The open data catalogue is queried through the national portal’s CKAN API. Population figures come from Wikidata. Bus and tram lines, and their stops, are read from OpenStreetMap by geographic extent: a route almost always runs beyond the commune’s boundary.
Photographs
The site’s photographs and logos all come from Wikimedia Commons, where every file carries an explicit licence and a named author: public domain, CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA. City views are the lead illustration of the matching Wikipedia article (Wikidata property P18); monument photographs follow the Wikidata identifier carried by the OpenStreetMap object; brand logos are those the brand declares on Wikidata (property P154), shown to identify the venue.
The author and licence of each image appear beneath the image itself, as CC BY and CC BY-SA require. No image is taken from another directory or a commercial site: a photograph without an identifiable licence cannot be published, and so does not appear here.
Maps
Map tiles come from OpenStreetMap’s tile servers and carry their own attribution notice, shown in the corner of every map. The points plotted are the directory’s own, themselves from OpenStreetMap under the ODbL 1.0 licence.
Listings and open data
Every listing is built from an OpenStreetMap object, identified by its type and number, under the ODbL 1.0 licence. Opening hours and contact details are supplied by contributors and may be out of date: ring ahead before travelling. Dataset files are served by the national portal; this site hosts no copy of them.
Current figures
37,540 listings across 12 cities and 20 categories. Site last generated: 27 septembre 2026.
Correcting a detail
Errors in an address, opening hours or a name are fixed at the source, on OpenStreetMap: the correction is picked up automatically at the next generation. For anything else, write to contact@cityinfo.ae.