Upcoming Conference: Whose Land, Whose Home, Whose Rent? Assembling property in Switzerland
A two-day workshop on property in Switzerland
Property fundamentally shapes how societies operate, organize space, use and allocate resources, and distribute privileges and rights. Property thus holds significant political and socio-economic importance, influencing economic incentives, and shaping societal power in decision-making. Considering land and housing in Switzerland and beyond, property rights are among the best protected legal rights.
Yet despite this societal importance, systematic, comparative, and multidisciplinary knowledge about Swiss property – for housing, real estate, and land – remains surprisingly limited and fragmented. Scholars, practitioners, and civil society actors / activists working in Switzerland’s different geographical regions, disciplinary fields and institutional contexts rarely dialogue about this topic. The obscurity of property data as well as differences in its availability, handling, and processing in different Swiss municipalities intensifies this knowledge fragmentation, with crucial consequences, for instance, for preventing economic crimes, such as money laundering or tax avoidance.
This fragmentation and obscurity of property knowledge matter particularly in the intersecting crisis of housing and climate, because property shapes both possible responses to these crises and socio-spatial inequalities. Consider, for instance, debates on the reduction of land consumption or on the implementation of climate adaptation measures on Swiss private property. That Switzerland is confronted with an intensifying housing crisis, exclusionary housing dynamics, and environmental challenges further intensify the urgent need for multidisciplinary exchange around property to support an understanding of how property functions in this context.
The 2-day workshop “Whose Land, Whose Home, Whose Rent – Assembling property in Switzerland” seeks to address this need for connecting researchers with diverse disciplinary backgrounds (e.g., geographers, sociologists, economists, lawyers, environmental scholars, planners, and anthropologists), practitioners, and civil actors / activists to examine how property operates in Switzerland. As part of the SNSF-funded project “the responsible city” this gathering will offer presentations as well as more interactive workshops.
We welcome contributions that focus on land, real estate and housing property in the context of the green transition addressing the following themes:
- Property governance: what legal and regulatory transformations shape the functioning of property (data) in Switzerland?
- Geographies of property: how does the regulation and functioning of property differ across space? How do Swiss geographies shape the functioning of property? How are these geographies shaped by counter knowledge, contestations and contestations?
- Societal transformations: How does property shape societal transformations? What urban inequalities does it enable? How does property shape responses to the climate crisis?
- Historical perspectives: How has the Swiss property regime developed? Which conflicts and historical constellations have brought them about?
- Methodological contributions: What challenges does research face when researching property in Switzerland (e.g. data transparency and availability)? What approaches help address them?
- Everyday life: How does property shape culture, representations, everyday life, notions of home-making or consumer aspirations?
Alongside academic contributions, we specifically encourage submissions from civil society or activist engagements or research. Presentations can take multiple creative or more traditional formats (e.g., presentations of 15 min, posters, lightening talks, workshops). To allow for conversations between across the Swiss linguistic communities English will be the main language of the conference. Please approach us about possibilities of translation, if you would like to participate but find English to be a hurdle.
Abstracts: Please submit your abstract (max. 300 words) including information about the format you wish to present in as well your afiliation in the form below.
Deadline: January 10, 2026
Date of the event and venue: October 8-9, 2026, Zurich
Organizers: This workshop is jointly organized by Gabriela Debrunner (UNIL, Institute of Geography and Sustainability, PLANH Research Group), Ifigeneia Dimitrakou (UZH, SURB Research Group), Hanna Hilbrandt (UZH, SURB Research Group) as part of the SNSF funded project The Responsible City.