Expert Explains the Hidden Crowd Engineering Behind Event Venues | WSJ Pro Perfected

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I don't think people comprehend how incredibly dangerous crowds can be when not carefully controlled and influenced by well planned processes and design. The Halloween crush in Korea killed 159 people in just minutes, and there was no stopping it from happening until it was far too late. This is such an important and underappreciated type of design and psychology, glad to see content focusing on it.

One of the highlight of living in London is how terrific the crowd management is here. Wonderful work, thank you for your service!

We needed this guy at the Travis Scott concert. That’s a lot on his shoulders to make sure the flow goes to plan.

I work in the events industry and let me tell you A LOT of thought and work goes into tiny aspects of crowd management. Even the specific size and shape of the pit barrier. Where I used to work we had people on towers at music shows just monitoring how the crowd was moving and behaving from above to try and spot potential issues before they developed. Of course there have been some recent high profile disasters, but these underpin how important this subject is. Crowds have a mind of their own and can make people behave very differently.

There's an art to any task you can do, no matter how small or big it is. Edit for those of you commenting, this is a common expression "There's an art to XYZ." You must not have heard it before, but it's a legit saying in English.

I thought this was Vox. I love this type of video.

I absolutely love when places are designed well for flow of traffic and control. a decent amount of people have no spatial awareness and its a pet peeve of mine. Im also not a fan of those more aggressive people and having clear and organized queues can make it a breeze. Love the pen idea, literally herding animals lol. This guy is a Human herder! Can we get this guy into grocery stores? because they need a lot of work.

Japan comiket has some of the best crowd controls I’ve seen and experienced. Multiple ways of transportation to get to the venue, ultra organized line to get in, and multiple ways to get out when the event is over. Plus the majority of Japanese are very disciplined when it comes to lining up. I saw people help strangers to keep their belongings together when the others have to go use a restroom.

One crucial issue overlooked in this but is vitally important is how do you safely and efficiently evacuate large numbers of people safely and quickly in the event of en emergency. That is also the job of engineers.

The occasional story comes out about over crowding and people being crushed. Imagine how many times it would happen if we didn’t have people like him. Well done 🙏🏻

Mind-blowing how every detail counts! 😮

Having this video posted a few days before the Copa America final game disaster in Miami is something else

Anyone else here after just witnessing the madness at the Copa final in Miami tonight??

Intriguing to get a glimpse into how much strategic planning goes into handling crowd movement at major venues. The careful choreography to keep people safe, satisfied, and revenue flowing, is truly commendable.

That was beautiful. Thank you for sharing a tiny glimpse of your profession, and thank you for keeping us safe.

The holy mosque in Makkah is also a perfect example of crowd control engineering. Amazing video.

The crowd for the start of the event can trickle in and it's relatively easy going, but when the event is over, that's when the real issues are present.

Crowd control is so important in events to keep everyone safe and everything flowing smoothly. When I worked at my local 10k I got to see it in action at the finish/expo. Crowd crushes scare me with how easily they can happen with no way to stop it, so I respect and appreciate the crowd control engineers very much!

Conmebol, the Charlotte stadium, and miami stadium needed to watch this before the copa America started.