SHANGHAI has lost 30 percent of its distinctive shikumen residential communities in the past five years, an expert said yesterday.

With the city’s rapid development in recent decades, most of these stone-gated residential buildings have been demolished with their residents relocated.

In their heyday, there were more than 9,000 shikumen lanes in the city, said Ruan Yisan, director of the National Historic Cities Research Center at Tongji University.