Neighborhood milieu in the cultural economy of city development: Berlin’s Helmholtzplatz and Soldiner in the German “Social City” program

► Two different contexts dominate for understanding milieus in social city development. ► The strategic meaning of milieu is developed in urban marketing-oriented cultural planning theory. ► The eco-symbolic meaning of milieu is introduced to emphasize milieu as local personally valued place attachment. ► The analysis of the “Social City” program in Berlin neighborhoods leads to a critique of the strategic meaning of milieu, where additional support for local place attachment would allow the neighborhood’s milieu to evolve according to residents’ own way of being. This paper studies the meaning of neighborhood milieu and its appropriation in social city development by conducting content analysis on two neighborhoods and supplementing it with semi-structured questionnaires. The case study suggests that in social city development, the concept of milieu serves as an image creation goal that attempts to mix marginal neighborhoods with new creative milieu. The focus on local place attachment appears to be a short-term project that does not contribute to residents’ empowerment in the long run. Contrary to the current usage of milieu, which allows for the fabrication of particular images leading to many socio-cultural contradictions, this paper argues for the utility of milieu as place attachment for local residents. This approach could prove to be helpful for social regeneration within the context of city development.