Going by the look of the images on it's wikipedia page, most of the people next to that road aren't at/near ground level. I don't how many stories up you'd have to get before the pollution and noise aren't a problem, but I'm guessing the air only gets fresher the higher you go.

Some of the reason why poor areas in the US are around highways and busy streets have to do with the history of redlining (https://phys.org/news/2024-02-highways-historically-redlined...). Even today when a city wants to build a loud/smelly/polluting highway or a factory or a landfill or a sewer treatment plant it's the poorest areas that are the least able to fight back, and putting them in the areas where poor people are will mean the least amount of inconvenience for the wealthy who often live far away from those neighborhoods. After a source of pollution is in place, very few people want to move in right next to it, so any houses there tend to be inexpensive and may be the only housing poor people can afford which further concentrates them into those areas.

As someone that lives in Dubai, this isn’t accurate. No one wants to live right by Sheik Zayed road. People want to live by the sea on the Palm for example, JBR, or perhaps in the Marina area.

Driving up SZ road, all you see are tons of shitty retailers and car dealerships. Trust me, wealthy people especially are not living next to it.

Please take a look at the high-rise along sheik zayed in business bay, around down town and World Trade Center and explain to me how those are low end living. It’s all 4 and 5 star hotels with significant portions dedicated to long term (yearly) contracts.

It’s only Al Quoz that is car dealerships. But on both sides of Al Quoz you find high-end, high rise