How tenants and property owners handle responsibilities around maintenance and repair
Sub-project 1 focuses on controversies around everyday property relations to inquire into the tenants and landlords’ responsibilities in maintaining housing, including nature, community, and home.
Densifying Swiss cities are witnessing an increasing demolition of their housing stock, with between 5,000 and 6,000 houses being torn down every year (Niederhäuser, 2024), predominantly in the cantons of Zurich, with over 2,300 demolished flats in 2023 (Kanton Zürich, 2025) and Geneva, with over 300 destroyed flats (Statistique Genève, 2024).
The question of whether to renovate or demolish existing housing stocks emerges as a focal point in contemporary political debates, where the Ersatzneubau (replacement construction) is often promoted as more sustainable and energy efficient than the existing building stock (Müller et al., 2023). These massive structural interventions are also argued for with reference to the poor condition of the building structure, which may result from long periods of reduced maintenance and neglect (Hilbrandt & Dimitrakou, 2022).
At stake are not only concerns about the tremendous environmental impact of new constructions and waste caused by the demolitions, but also questions of which buildings are worthy of receiving maintenance, which sites are protected for their heritage value (Hertweck et al., 2022) and who advocates and practices such material care.
This SP will assume an everyday perspective that puts practices of maintenance and repair at the scale of several buildings in both case cities into sharper focus. Taking into account the metabolic and relational dimensions of demolition, construction and renovation, the research also follows the material flows and traces that relate local building activities to regional and global contexts.
By considering how responsible maintenance is framed and practiced, as well as by analyzing the socio-spatial transformations that result from associated responsibility regimes, this SP advances an everyday analysis inspired in feminist care ethics, that puts the relation of inhabitants with their environment into sharper focus and connects them to the workings of responsibility in different property constellations.
