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.