There are many factors not mentioned in the article. In Berlin we simply talk about before and after the pandemic.
Prices have gone up like crazy after; this includes rent. Cheap airlines like Ryanair & Easyjet have canceled many flights to Berlin in the last year.
I can see this as I rent out my living room on Airbnb part time and 2024 was the lowest no. of bookings since I started, almost a decade ago (2022 was a brief surge as everyone went traveling 'again' but that was it).
Hotel prices are also crazy (I got a lot of guests in 2023 that choose a high-end Airbnb over a four star hotel for the first time because the latter was now outside their budget in my area).
Then we have the phenomenon of restaurants closing early. It was easy to get dinner at 11pm at a good restaurant in my neighborhood (central Berlin).
Most such places would close at midnight/1am. Now the latest is 9pm with most places closing at 10pm.
There is a street next to mine that is full of restaurants and bars. It used to be lively until 1:30am, even during the week. Before the pandemic. Now it's dead and feels like a small town now around 10:30pm.
Talking to several patrons there, this is what happened: during the pandemic all service staff found other jobs. Places were closed because they had to (lock-downs).
At the same time there was turnover of tenants in the neighborhood. People fled the cities because remote work allowed them.
The empty flats got new tenants and these people moved in under the assumption their street would keep the same noise levels. Ofc the landlords, desperate to fill their emptying flats during the lock-downs, would not tell them of any caveats in this regard.
When the lock-downs ended restaurants initially couldn't open longer than 10pm anyway because they couldn't find enough staff. People had found other work and didn't return to these jobs.
When staffing rebounded and they tried to open longer, two things got in the way:
1. Customers had gotten used to eat early (we're talking two years here from end of the lock-downs to the staffing situation in the gastronomy 'kinda' normalizing).
2. The new tenants in the flats in a street with restaurants had lived for 2+ years under the assumption their street was quiet from 10:30pm. They called the police and got injunctions for noise nuisance etc. TL;DR it was legally not possible any more to open longer for these restaurants, all of a sudden.
As a social dancer (tango) I noticed the same things mentioned re. the clubs. Prices have gone up, as a result less well-off people simply can't afford going dancing more than once a week. Most of my friends used to go 2--3 times a week. I still do but I work in tech and so does my partner and we don't have kids or any mortgage to pay off. We're in the 1%.
To get you an idea: the average venue for social dancing charged 7 EUR during the week, in 2019.
It's was 10 EUR when places reopened after the pandemic in late 2021 (i.e. 43% more).
And this year some venues have raised prices to 10--13 EUR as of 1st of January. So we're talking a 43%--86% price increase for admission and drinks went along in pricing.
It's simply not affordable. As a result, the average age in the Berlin tango scene went from 30 to 50 in just five years. It's mostly old(er) people with very few younger ones that work in well paying jobs (lots of techies) or have other sources of wealth.
And because more older people make up the majority of the audience, venues close much earlier. It was easy to go dancing until 1--2am during the week and 4--5am on weekends. Now it's midnight during the week and 2--3am max on weekends.
And because of the issue with airlines and hotel/Airbnb prices we also have less social dance tourists. Berlin used to be a top destination for social dancers from abroad to come visit but its noticeable less in 2023/2024 than before the pandemic.