As a place with deep historical and cultural legacy, Madinah is a key destination for religious tourism. The city receives approximately 9 million visitors per year, and the Saudi Vision 2030 targets to achieve an annual average of 25 million visitors by 2030 to support economic diversity and growth. In preparation of this rapid change in urban development, urban planners need to create safeguards to protect the Madinah’s unique cultural identity and living heritage practices. The Madinah Erth research project explores how emerging technologies can support the identification, documentation, and preservation of intangible cultural heritage in Madinah. Conducted through a collaboration between the MIT Norman B. Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism (LCAU) and King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST), this study aims to develop a technological framework for collecting and analyzing cultural heritage data from social media platforms, compare these insights with traditional data collection methods, and build an Arabic-language retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) model capable of categorizing unstructured heritage-related content. The project aims to produce a digital platform with data visualizations that reveal patterns of living heritage across the city, supporting planners and policymakers in integrating cultural heritage insights into future urban development strategies.