In this program, Professor Kofi Boone from NCSU, Mel Norton of Bull City 150, and former Mayor of Chapel Hill, Senator Howard Lee, examine the use of discriminatory land use policies in the Triangle. The impacts of these historical policies will help shine light on some of the inequitable land and housing practices today. This program was sponsored by our ULI Triangle Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and Young Leaders committees. Click here to view the video recording.

About Our Speakers: 

Professor Kofi Boone, FASLA
Kofi Boone, FASLA is a University Faculty Scholar and Professor of Landscape Architecture at NC State University in the College of Design. Kofi is a Detroit native and a graduate of the University of Michigan (BSNR 1992, MLA 1995). His work is in the overlap between landscape architecture and environmental justice with specializations in democratic design, digital media, and interpreting cultural landscapes. Kofi’s teaching and professional work have earned awards including student and professional ASLA awards. He serves on the Board of Directors of The Corps Network as well as the Landscape Architecture Foundation where he is President-Elect. Kofi serves on the advisory board of The Black Landscape Architects Network.  He has published work broadly in peer-reviewed as well as popular media. including The Conversation, Journal of Landscape and Urban Planning and Landscape Architecture Magazine.

Melissa “Mel” Norton 
Melissa “Mel” Norton is an urban planner by trade, who has spent the past fifteen years working in the fields of community and economic development, public history, and grassroots organizing. From 2016 – 2020, Mel was the Project Director of “Bull City 150: Reckoning With Durham’s Past to Build a More Equitable Future” – a public history and community engagement project that engaged thousands of Durhamites with the local history of racial and economic inequity in the areas of housing and education. Since the summer of 2020 Mel has been working with the Carolina Federation– a statewide organization that brings local people together across race and the rural-urban divide to build political and electoral power in their own communities. She lives in the Golden Belt neighborhood (historic Edgemont) with her partner, daughter, and two wild puppies

Senator Howard Lee
Senator Howard Nathanial Lee was elected the first African American mayor in the majority-white city of Chapel Hill in 1969, the first to be elected to such a position in the South since Reconstruction. Lee served as Mayor of Chapel Hill from 1969-1975. In 1990 Senator Lee was elected to the North Carolina Senate, serving from 1990 – 1994, and again from 1996-2002. While in the Senate, Lee concentrated on issues surrounding public education. In 2003, the North Carolina State Board of Education elected Lee as its chairman, followed by the appointment as the new executive director of the NC Education Cabinet in 2009.