Los Angeles has been lucky to be part of the Streetsblog family, along with New York City, Washington, D.C. and San Francisco.

As in the other cities, the local version here is an important source of news and advocacy around the general proposition that streets don't just belong to cars. It sounds like a simple idea, but it actually has enormous ramifications. Just for instance: If our streets should be friendly to pedestrians, bikes and what could broadly be called street life, then it follows that certain kinds of development (walkable, dense urbanism) should be favored over others (sprawl.)

It wasn't an intuitive fit for L.A. because of the city's car culture and development patterns, in which, until fairly recently, the automobile was hegemonic.

But for that reason, it's voice has been even more important here than in, say, New York City, which has a natural constituency of transit advocates because everyone uses the subway to get around.

Today, founder Damien Newton wrote a post saying the money's run out and they're having to shut down later this month.

The good news, though, is that Newton says he'll be coming back with new local funding for a different site with the same focus, one that will be staffed with writers and editors. We'll be looking forward to the rollout.

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