Urban Lab
Creating the world’s most advanced human-centric,
city-wide testbed for sustainable urbanisation
Innovation Partners
What is the Urban Lab?
Expo City Dubai is a catalyst for innovation, a testbed for new technologies and a platform for groundbreaking ideas and transformative concepts. Its Urban Lab is a collaborative effort that will reshape urban living and drive sustainable progress.
Urban Lab at Expo City Dubai is an open, innovation-driven, city-wide testbed dedicated to piloting and showcasing technology and innovative solutions for sustainable urban development.
It is a collaborative space where experts, innovators, business, government and academia from around the world converge to explore cutting-edge technologies that address the most pressing urban challenges.
It utilises the city’s extensive, fully integrated smart infrastructure to test and scale innovative, human-centric technologies aimed at enhancing the urban environment, improving quality of life and promoting sustainability.
This pioneering initiative reflects Expo City’s dedication to fostering an ecosystem of innovation and collaboration, its commitment to improving people’s lives and setting a benchmark for cities worldwide.
Innovation & Development Areas
Testbed
Its Testbed provides a real-world environment for testing mature technologies or near-market-ready solutions that address specific urban challenges or market demands.
Digital Portal
Its interactive Digital Portal is the central hub and main interface for the urban lab, showcasing its offerings and data insights and setting out the city’s extensive physical and digital assets.
Maker Space
Its Maker Space is a community workshop and physical development space located within The Link building at Expo City Dubai.
World-Class Benefits
Innovation Acceleration
Urban Lab provides a fast track for innovative technologies to enter real urban environments and make a meaningful impact.
Collaboration Oppotunities
Businesses have the chance to collaborate with cities and civic organizations, gaining valuable insights and support.
Urban Quality of Life
The ultimate goal is to enhance urban living, making cities more sustainable, efficient, and livable for residents.
Unique, Real-World Urban Testing
Expert Team
An expert team to support the development and scaling of technological solutions and actively curate collaboration and partnerships across business, government, investors and academia.
Regulatory Compliant
A regulatory-compliant and versatile sandbox environment, customisable to specific requirements, where new solutions can be easily and safely tested.
Free Zone
A free zone environment that connects Fortune 500 companies, entrepreneurs, SMEs and start-ups, with incentives for company establishment, expedited processes for licensing and shared corporate services so businesses can operate and innovate efficiently.
Live Data Points
More than 200,000 live data points from sensors, cameras, people flow, IoT and monitoring that are can be used to validate the testing results.
Human-Centric
A human-centric, real-world urban testing ground with city-wide smart infrastructure to enable live physical and digital trials.
Real Urban Context
The Sandbox Environment is situated within a partner city, offering businesses the opportunity to interact with the real challenges and dynamics of urban life. This setting provides valuable insights that cannot be replicated in a controlled laboratory.
Infrastructure Integration
Businesses have access to the city's existing infrastructure and services, enabling them to seamlessly integrate their technologies with the urban ecosystem.
Dynamic Environment
Wholistic datasets from Expo City’s dynamic urban environment, highlighting challenges and use cases to boost businesses engagement.
Safety & Regulation
Safety protocols and regulatory guidelines are in place to ensure that all deployments within the Sandbox Environment comply with ethical and safety standards.
Who is it for?
Entrepreneurs, large and small businesses, academia, global cities and governments who are eager to transform sustainable urban ideas into practical and scalable solutions.
Innovators can benefit from Expo City’s project management, technology integration and urban planning expertise and access a network of individuals, organisations, researchers and city authorities to facilitate knowledge exchange and collaboration.
Stakeholders and tenants can participate in community feedback sessions and pilot testing.
We strive to create smarter, more efficient, and more sustainable urbon spaces in our cities.
A local to global initiative
Urban Lab represents a vision for the future where technology and urban development converge to create vibrant, sustainable and thriving cities. By facilitating collaboration between innovators and cities, we aim to revolutionise urban life and lead the way towards smarter, more connected, more inclusive urban environments.
City-wide testbed with tailor-made sandboxed environments
The sandbox environment is at the heart of Urban Lab's innovative approach to urban development and serves as a controlled, real-world testing ground where technology- organisations can deploy and assess their solutions. The size and scale of the environment can be adjusted to include the entire city, creating a unique opportunity for large-scale experimentation, measurement and verification. This environment is designed to bridge the gap between theoretical innovation and practical implementation, allowing businesses to refine their technologies and demonstrate their potential impact on urban living.
Promoting collaboration and partnerships
Urban Lab actively encourages tight collaboration and partnerships between businesses, municipalities and civic organisations to enable them to integrate and scale.
The Link: a bridge to your innovative transformation
Welcome to The Link, the home of Urban Lab, where innovative projects are born, raised and shared with the world – a launchpad that creates solutions from ideas, through city-wide testing and transformation, and onwards for global impact.
Sara Thomsan
Freelancer
Jenny
Design Agency Owner
Mark Roberts
Owner of azzi
John Anderson
Ecommerce Owner
Michaerl Walker
Writer
Emily Davis
Web Developer
FAQs
These FAQs should help provide clarity and guidance to users interested in engaging with Urban Lab and its innovative urban development concept.
Urban Lab is an initiative that connects technology-based businesses with cities to foster innovation in urban development. It provides a platform for businesses to propose and test their urban technology solutions in real city environments.
To submit a proposal, you can email us with the contact information at the bottom of the page. We are developing an Urban Lab app to smooth out the process.
Urban Lab welcomes projects that use technology to address urban challenges or enhance city services. These can include solutions related to transportation, sustainability, public services, and more.
No, there is no cost to submit a proposal. However, if your proposal is accepted, there is / may be a service fee for accessing the Sandbox Environment.
The Sandbox Environment is a controlled testing space within Expo City and other partner cities / a partner city where accepted proposals can deploy and test their technologies in a real urban setting.
Proposals are carefully reviewed by the Urban Lab team based on criteria such as feasibility, alignment with urban goals, potential impact, and scalability.
If your proposal is accepted, you will receive instructions on how to proceed, including how to access the Sandbox Environment and the terms of the service fee.
Yes, collaborations are encouraged. You can involve other businesses, research institutions, or civic organizations in your proposal to strengthen your project's potential.
The review process duration can vary depending on the volume of submissions and the complexity of proposals. You will be notified of the status of your proposal in due course.
Urban Lab offers guidance, infrastructure integration support, and data collection tools during the Sandbox testing phase to ensure a successful deployment.
You can find the latest news and updates on our website's blog section or subscribe to our newsletter for regular updates.
Urban Lab takes data security seriously. We have measures in place to protect your information and ensure its confidentiality.
Yes, successful projects that demonstrate positive impacts may have the opportunity to scale up and be integrated into broader city initiatives.
You can reach out to our team through the "Join Us" section of our website. We are here to assist with any questions or concerns.
Still have questions?
Email us with your questions and we will get back to you as soon as possible.