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Need you wonder why we started a drinking game called “Portland” here at the magazine" The Oregon metropolis always has so much to show for its progressive thinking. A large team of landscape architects and other designers can take credit and pride in the new MAX Orange Line, seen on LAM?s cover this month, which at 7.3 miles is the latest addition to the city’s light-rail network. Mayer/Reed led the urban design of eight stations, and ZGF Architects led urban design on two others. Also involved are landscape architects who work for the client transit agency, TriMet, plus the Portland offices of Marianne Zarkin Landscape Architects, Lango Hansen Landscape Architects, and Alta Planning + Design. The rail route incorporates bold, colorful streetscapes with more than 3,000 trees, 286 bioswales, and?newer in the United States than in Europe?a short stretch of vegetated track bed. Sean Batty, ASLA, the director of operating projects at TriMet, tells the author, Betsy Anderson, Associate ASLA: ?Are we trying to solve a transportation problem" No, we?re trying to solve an urban design problem, which we?re defining as landscape architects: We?re trying to create positive human habitat.? The May issue of LAM has numerous other fine examples of habitat: There?s the new plaza around a campus residential tower at MassArt in Boston by Ground, Inc., which won a 2015 ASLA Professional Award for Residential Design. And then there is the...