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Kairos Shen’s two decades actively spent shaping the city of Boston’s evolution aren’t over.
Boston Mayor Michelle Wu on Tuesday named the longtime Boston Redevelopment Agency chief planner under equally longtime former Mayor Tom Menino as the new chief of planning – successor role to the Boston Planning & Development Agency director at the new Boston Planning Department. His first day will be Oct. 15.
Shen succeeds Arthur Jemison, who left to head the Detroit Housing Commission earlier this month after shepherding through the creation of the Boston Planning Department and the launch of several reform initiatives.
After leaving the BPDA in 2015, Shen moved to academia, first lecturing at the MIT Center for Real Estate from 2016 to 2020 and then becoming a professor at the center and its executive director. Shen’s also spent the last two years as a member of the committee drawing up recommendations to revise the city’s Article 80 development review process. That committee is expected to release its recommendations later this week.
“I’m thrilled to welcome Kairos into leadership of Boston’s Planning Department and all the critical functions shaping the built environment for affordability, equity, and resilience,” Wu said in a statement. “As a longtime friend and advisor, Kairos brings an unparalleled knowledge and expertise of this work and our communities. His decades of public, private, and institutional experience in Boston, and the relationships he has built across the city, will help the new Planning Department advance our ambitious work to grow Boston and make our city a place everyone can call home.”
In announcing the move, Wu’s office described Shen as “a mentor and trusted advisor [to Wu] since her early days working under the Menino administration nearly 15 years ago.”
“I’m excited to return to City Hall with a fresh perspective after a decade of teaching, research, and mentoring the next generation of urban planners and designers,” Shen said in a statement. “Boston is a different city than it was ten years ago, and I’m inspired by the incredible strides Mayor Wu has taken in just two and a half years. I’m looking forward to advancing the significant work that has already begun including zoning reform and making development review more predictable and transparent.”
Devin Quirk, the current interim chief of planning, will resume his role as deputy chief of the department, Wu’s office said, overseeing all aspects of day-to-day operations.
Speaking with reporters following the mayor’s annual speech to the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce Wednesday morning, Shen said he would be bringing his “independent relationships” with developers as he returns to the ninth floor of City Hall.
“I’ve developed independent relationships with the business community of Boston and especially the development community – not only when I was [at the city] but I learned a new dimension on their work when I was teaching because at the [MIT] Center for Real Estate where we’re trying to figure out how to really elevate the quality of development but also tackling all of the difficult problems that cities face,” he said, saying he’s gotten to know developers “as partners.”
This story has been updated with comment from Kairos Shen.
