  With the growing number of gravitational-wave detections and the advent of
large galaxy redshift surveys, a new era in cosmology is unfolding. This study
explores the synergies between gravitational waves and galaxy surveys to
jointly constrain cosmological and gravitational-wave population parameters. We
introduce CHIMERA, a novel code for gravitational-wave cosmology combining
information from the population properties of compact binary mergers and galaxy
catalogs. We study constraints for scenarios representative of LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA
O4 and O5 observing runs, assuming to have a complete catalog of potential host
galaxies with either spectroscopic or photometric redshift measurements. We
find that a percent-level measurement of $H_0$ could be achieved with the best
100 binary black holes in O5 using a spectroscopic galaxy catalog. In this
case, the intrinsic correlation that exists between $H_0$ and the binary black
hole population mass scales is broken. Instead, by using a photometric catalog
the accuracy is degraded up to a factor of $\sim\! 9$, leaving a significant
correlation between $H_0$ and the mass scales that must be carefully modeled to
avoid bias. Interestingly, we find that using spectroscopic redshift
measurements in the O4 configuration yields a better constraint on $H_0$
compared to the O5 configuration with photometric measurements. In view of the
wealth of gravitational-wave data that will be available in the future, we
argue the importance of obtaining spectroscopic galaxy catalogs to maximize the
scientific return of gravitational-wave cosmology.
