Dubai or New York?

Dubai's whole coast is a beach destination: pale sand, calm and shallow Gulf water, and resort beaches on Palm Jumeirah that are the main point of the stay. Winter is the swimming season, and in summer swimmers go out only at dawn and dusk.

New York's Atlantic beaches at Coney Island, Brighton Beach and the Rockaways are real beaches, with a boardwalk and a surfing crowd. The water is warm for only a short stretch of summer, though, and weekends are packed. It makes a day out from the city, not a beach vacation.

Both cities eat through their immigrant communities: Dubai in the Keralan, Pakistani and Iranian canteens of Deira and Karama, New York across Flushing, Jackson Heights and Arthur Avenue. New York goes further, with more cuisines, a deeper fine-dining scene and classics of its own, the slice, the bagel and deli pastrami.

Dubai's high end lives in hotel dining rooms and the Friday brunch. Alcohol is served only in licensed venues, so wine and cocktails play a small part. In New York, the cocktail bars, natural wine and coffee are part of the meal.

New York could fill a week with museums alone, from the Met and MoMA to the American Museum of Natural History and the Cloisters. Its famous landmarks, the Statue of Liberty, the Brooklyn Bridge and Grand Central, sit among neighbourhoods that carry their own history, from SoHo's cast iron to Lower East Side tenements.

Dubai's sights are mostly the Burj Khalifa, the Museum of the Future and the skyline at dusk. The old trading port survives along the Creek, in Al Fahidi, Al Shindagha and the abra crossing to the souks, and two or three days cover it.

Dubai's nightlife happens indoors, in hotel clubs, rooftop bars and the beach clubs of Palm Jumeirah. It is polished and costly, dress codes matter, and the boozy weekend brunch is its signature. There are no dive-bar streets and no drinking outdoors.

New York offers every kind of night at once: East Village dive bars, West Village wine bars, gay bars with Stonewall-era history and warehouse dance floors in Bushwick that run past dawn, with trains running all night to get you home.

Neither city is a nature destination, but New York has more to offer. Central Park and Prospect Park are true green landscapes, Jamaica Bay draws migrating birds, and a train up the Hudson reaches the rocky climbs of Breakneck Ridge in about ninety minutes. October, with the autumn colour, is the best time.

Dubai's outdoors is the desert: dune drives, sandboarding and a night in a camp an hour inland, plus kitesurfing and paddleboarding on the coast. The Hajar mountains around Hatta are the only break from flat ground, and from May to September the heat rules out almost everything except at dawn.

From New York, trains open up a long list: Philadelphia's Independence Hall, Princeton, Yale in New Haven, and the Hudson Valley with its Gilded Age estates, Dia Beacon and Storm King. The North Fork and the Hamptons make a longer day.

Dubai has three strong outings and then little else. Abu Dhabi has the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque and the Louvre, Sharjah next door has its heritage quarter and Islamic art, and Al Ain has oases and forts. All of them are reached by road across the desert.

Dubai is the easier choice with children. It has Legoland and the theme parks near Jebel Ali, water parks, the Dubai Mall aquarium, snow play at the Mall of the Emirates, a shallow sea and kids' clubs at the resorts. It is also very safe, and children are welcome at dinner late into the evening. The catch is the summer heat and the taxi rides between everything.

New York has its own big draws, from the dinosaur halls and planetarium at Natural History to the Bronx Zoo and the carousel and boats in Central Park. Stairs-only subway stations, small hotel rooms and Midtown crowds make the days harder work.

Manhattan's grid and a subway that runs around the clock mean you can see New York on foot and by train and never need a car. Ferries and Citi Bike fill the gaps. The annoyances are station stairs, confusing express lines and the trip to and from the airports.

Dubai stretches some 50km along the coast and was planned for driving. The driverless metro along Sheikh Zayed Road is clean and cool, but the stations are far apart across wide roads, and the beaches, the Palm and the theme parks usually mean a taxi. Only the Marina, Al Fahidi and Downtown are good for walking.

Dubai shops on a grand scale, but New York has the wider range, and far more of it out on the street. Dubai's strength is the giant mall. The Dubai Mall and the Mall of the Emirates hold almost every luxury and high-street label, with an unusually deep choice of jewellery and watches. Across the Creek in Deira, the Gold Souk sells by weight, and the spice and perfume souks are full of saffron, frankincense and oud.

New York has the flagships and department stores too, from Fifth Avenue and Madison to Bergdorf Goodman, Saks and Macy's, but it also has whole neighbourhoods to browse on foot. SoHo mixes big brands with the small boutiques of Nolita and the West Village, Williamsburg and Greenpoint have vintage and records, and specialist shops for rare books, sneakers and cameras complete a range Dubai cannot match.

Neither city is cheap, but Dubai gives you more ways to save. Hotel rates fall sharply in summer, and the canteens of Deira and Karama, the metro and the abras cost very little. The big costs are winter resorts, the headline attractions and alcohol.

New York is expensive all year. Hotel rooms are small, every restaurant bill has tax and a tip on top, and theatre tickets are steep. Pizza slices, food carts, the free ferry and the parks help, and so does sleeping in Brooklyn, Queens or New Jersey.

This is where the two cities differ most. New York has Broadway, the Met Opera, the Philharmonic and City Ballet at Lincoln Center, and Carnegie Hall. Jazz has lived in Village basements and Harlem for a century, there is music somewhere every night, and summer brings free Shakespeare in the parks.

Dubai has the Dubai Opera, which hosts touring ballet, musicals and orchestras in the cooler months, and an arena for big pop tours. It has no resident company and very little home-grown scene. In Dubai you book a show in advance; you don't stumble on one.

Dubai's way to rest is the resort spa, while New York's is an old bathhouse tradition. On Palm Jumeirah and the Jumeirah coast, whole floors are given over to hammam rituals, scrubs and hydrotherapy pools. They are air-conditioned and work as well in August as in January, and for real silence the desert retreats an hour inland add starry nights among the dunes.

New York's steam rooms are older and plainer: the East Village bathhouse that has run since the late 1800s with its ice-cold plunge, the banyas of Brighton Beach and the Korean jjimjilbang spas in Queens and New Jersey. Outside them the city is loud, so for calm you go to the gardens of the Cloisters or the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.