Kairos Shen is a familiar face to anyone who follows development in the city.

During his lengthy career, Shen worked from 1993 to 2015 at the city’s development and planning agency, at the time called the Boston Redevelopment Authority. Before leaving the BRA, he rose to the rank of director of planning, wielding influence over development in the city – including for the Rose Kennedy Greenway, the South Boston Waterfront Innovation District, and the renewals of Fenway Park and Nubian Square. His tenure included key projects that changed the face – and skyline – of Chinatown, too.

In the years since, he was the executive director of the Center for Real Estate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he had earlier earned a Master of Architecture.

Now, he’s back.

Shen is Boston’s new chief of planning, overseeing “community-engaged” planning, major real estate development regulations, and management of the Boston Planning and Development Agency’s more than 20 million square feet of real estate property. Sampan spoke with Shen recently at length about his views on development opportunities in Chinatown, his vision for the neighborhood, how to increase community engagement, and more. Following is an edited version of that conversation.

On Chinatown’s History With Development

I’m well aware of the development pressures and how the community has (had to) leverage benefits from the major developments that were occurring, starting from the ’90s to 2015, while I was at the BRA. And I know that there have been great successes in that. But Chinatown leadership has had to actually flex its political muscle to get what the community deserved in those discussions. Mayor Wu’s idea is that we don’t always have to be in an adversarial role with the development community to actually get them to make (needed) commitments and investments in places like Chinatown.

On Communicating With Chinatown

I recognize that sometimes discussions on planning, and specifically, discussions around development proposals, have not felt like they’ve been really, truly open to citizens and residents of Chinatown. But I think that we have created a new infrastructure, and the mayor has made a clear commitment to making sure that that process is more open and more democratic and reflective of the kinds of concerns that we hear from community members. This is actually part of a much more expanded Department of Communication and Engagement that never existed when I was here in the previous agency that ran and managed development.

And I think that with our investment in staff and infrastructure, we are hoping to make significant gains in engaging the community. I’ve already reached out to some of the community groups and talked to them about visiting with them and actually getting reacquainted to the issues. ….

… There’s still a lot of reliance on good word of mouth communication in Chinatown. So one concrete way to improve communication is to actually work with many of the existing nonprofit and community service organizations, and there’s an abundance of them in Chinatown, and to use them to help us communicate in Chinese and Vietnamese. We recognize that we need to do a better job and that the current means we’re using may not be effective; It’s our responsibility to get to them.

On What Makes Chinatown Special

We still have one of the most vibrant Chinatowns in the country. And, I think that we have a lot to build on in Chinatown, and that, I think, puts us in a really good place compared to some other cities in the U.S.

Chinatown is … still a critical center – even among the emerging new centers for Asian Americans like Quincy and Malden. That is because, in spite of all of the bad things that might have happened in development and planning over the decades, we’ve always invested in building affordable housing (through community-development partnerships). So unlike other Chinatowns in say Philadelphia and D.C. – I would say we are more vibrant because there are actually Asian Americans, multi-generational Asian Americans that live, work and spend their entire lives in Chinatown. It’s possible to do that. Now, I think there’s no question that the other important thing that has anchored our Chinatown is the commercial part of Chinatown, which are the restaurants and businesses.

Challenges to Chinatown

I think one of the big challenges going forward in Chinatown is to make sure that we continue to not take the businesses, the Asian American businesses, for granted. They need that kind of attention and support that other, downtown commercial businesses need.

Development Opportunities

As Chinatown is at the southern edge of Downtown core, the future is mixed use. One of the nice things is that Chinatown has had a lot of investment, housing investment, both from nonprofits building affordable housing and lower mixed income housing, as well as luxury housing along Washington Street along Stuart and Kneeland streets. We’ve seen … a bunch of big sort of market rate projects that, you know, as much as they delivered some affordable housing units, have brought in many new residents.

Some Chinatown residents, I think, are fearful that (luxury projects) would potentially push them out. I think that we are going through a planning process right now that will actually create new zoning, and new zoning for the Chinatown area. I think that we know that we need to engage not only the residents of Chinatown, but the business owners of Chinatown to make sure that we can continue to create new housing and create new opportunities for mixed use.

There are many Chinatown businesses, actually, that are in mixed-use buildings on Beach Street and Harrison Avenue, right there on the corner of Harrison and Beach. There’s actually significant office space. I think that new development, if they can incorporate both retail commercial office and then residential on top, I think that’s great. I think we need to do that. Now, specifically, how many of these sites can accommodate the sort of big development that can have really, a mixed use all in one site? I think there’s only a few limited sites – such as near Phillips Square, where Chauncey Street and Harrison Avenue come together at Essex Street.

That site … at some point … is a major development site that holds a great deal of opportunity. And actually, under Mayor Walsh, we did some of the planning that was to actually pedestrianize that leg of Chauncey Street. I would love to make that a real public space and as a common for the commercial side of Chinatown. So, in a way, the hotel that has been proposed at the site of the (old See Sun Market on Harrison Avenue) would be creating a frontage for this commercial space. We need to do more work in thinking about the potential opportunities of what the redevelopment of that site would bring. And in the near future, if there’s a redevelopment of the Verizon building, what all this will be and how this new set of development right on this little Phillip Square area, it could really be a new common for Chinatown.