Community Jameel and Wamda are hosting an MIT Media Lab multi-day workshop, bringing together different cultures, skills and expertise all focused on one big topic: redefining cities.

The workshop will take place at Alserkal Avenue in Dubai, and will host attendees from the MIT Media Lab community and from the MENA region, and will be facilitated by Ashley Shaffer and Nick Dupey from IDEO.

The participants will be prototyping within four different tracks, joined by MIT Media Lab professors, research assistants and research scientists who will be supporting them with mentorship, advice and technical help.

The tracks

Track 1: Learning for underserved communities, led by Philipp Schmidt and Noor Eddin Amer.

Teams will explore the use of virtual reality (VR) technology such as Google Cardboard, to create learning opportunities for underserved communities in general, and refugees in particular.

Track 2: Digital tools for a cooperative society, led by Sohan Dsouza, Donald Derek Haddad, Pinar Yanardag Delul and Iyad Rahwan.

Teams will investigate regional urban ecosystems facing a youth bulge and a shifting social and political landscape. They will work on finding ways to motivate citizens to collaborate while building communities. Topics will include safety, infrastructure, conservation, commerce, and education.

Track 3: Developing smart communal spaces, led by Poseidon Ho and Chrisoula Kapelonis.

This track will explore design solutions that enable communal spaces to function as if they were much larger, through technologies such as augmented reality and architectural robotics. Topics of focus will be micro-living, kinetic spaces and smart homes, ultimately resulting in prototypes for agile, simple and smart solutions for daily living.

Track 4: Urban intervention with data, led by Yan Zhang, Dawei Shen.

This track will investigate emerging technologies such as urban big data observatory and real-time simulations, with the goal of creating a democratic urban decision supporting system.

Each track will have around eight to 10 members who will get the chance to go on field trips around Dubai during the first day of the workshop and immerse themselves in the problems they are tackling.

After that they will be building their prototypes at the venue, and presenting them during a conference held on the last day, Friday September 2nd.

You can follow the teams and updates on the products, and/or send in questions/suggestions using the #MLDubai hashtag.

If you are participating, watch your inbox for updates on the tracks you’ll be integrating, and make sure you read up on the bios of your track leaders.