This paper discusses the impact of rapid economic development on air quality in the Emirate of Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE). Dubai is one of the fastest-growing cities in the world, with a population increase of approximately 80× over the last 60 years. The concentrations of five criteria air pollutants (CAPs) including carbon monoxide (CO), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), particulate matter with diameter less than 10 μm (PM10), ozone (O3) and sulphur dioxide (SO2) were studied from 2013 to 2021 at 14 regulatory monitoring stations. Results show that the biggest improvements in air pollution are for the primary air pollutants NO2 and SO2, with reductions of 54% and 93% respectively over the period studied. Gross domestic product (GDP), population growth and energy consumption are significantly and negatively correlated with NO2 and SO2 and strongly and positively correlated with PM10. CO is positively correlated with the number of buildings completed, while the results for O3 are inconclusive. Trends in NO2 and SO2 indicate that these two pollutants are decoupled from economic development, supporting, with caution, the Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis on the relationship between economic growth and environmental degradation. The improvement in the city's air quality is due to the effective implementation of local environmental policies, unaffected by large-scale development and urbanization. The monthly assessments of Dubai's air pollution for 2019 and 2020 show a 3–16% COVID-related improvement in the levels of the studied air pollutants, except for ozone, which increased by an average of 8%.