In this edition of Books of the Month, we're thinking about our built environment and the questions that might help us build better cities in the future. These scholars not only point out what isn’t working in our communities and current infrastructure, they highlight potential solutions – some based on real world examples while others have only been imagined.

Explore new interpretations of classic land ethics, multiple cases of climate action and land sovereignty and witness how past generations reacted to the changing climate. Scholars from across the College of Letters and Science provide insight into how human action and inaction has influenced the natural environment around us.

In this stunning student curated and designed exhibition, pieces from Maria Manetti Shrem's private art collection are experienced in new ways — none of them wrong! Not only does the exhibition, "Light into Density: Abstract Encounters 1920s–1960s," feature abstract paintings by renowned artists, it seeks to expand how viewers see and interpret artwork. On view at the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art through May 5.

Brett Snyder, a professor and chair of the MFA program in design at UC Davis, is both a teacher and an active practitioner whose work helps to reimagine spaces people know intimately while also collaboratively discovering what’s possible.