At Grist, we’ve been onto the trend of the youngs losing interest in driving for awhile now. And every time a new study or survey comes out to statistically corroborate the anecdotal evidence we see every day, we hear the same responses from skeptics -- it’s just the economy, just a stage of life. Wait til those millennials get real jobs, get married, have families, and move to the suburbs. Then you bet they’ll start driving.

But the latest report on declining driving trends -- released today by the U.S. PIRG Education Fund -- argues that a rejection of car culture is here to stay. “The Driving Boom is over,” it declares. In fact, the report calculates that “If the Millennial-led decline in per-capita driving continues for another dozen years … total vehicle travel in the United States could remain well below its 2007 peak through at least 2040 -- despite a 21 percent increase in population.”

The U.S. PIRG study reveals how, after six decades of steady growth, both total vehicle miles traveled (VMT) and VMT per capita have been falling since 2007. Total VMT is now at 2004 levels, while VMT per capita has fallen to 1996 levels. And once again, it’s those meddling millennials who are reimagining one of the pillars of American culture. Young people ages 16 to 34 drove an average of 23 percent fewer miles in 2009 than they did in 2001, according to the report. If you consider that more than half the people in that age group were old enough to drive in 2001, too, that suggests that even as those at the older end of this generation enter their 30s -- presumably settling into more stable jobs and in some cases starting families -- they’re still not switching over to a car-centric lifestyle at the same rate as generations before them.

Economic factors -- high gas prices, the recession -- obviously motivate people of all ages to drive less. But, as we’ve pointed out before, larger societal shifts lie behind millennials’ generation-wide “meh” attitude toward car ownership. Brian Merchant at Vice summarizes them in two words: Facebook and Brooklyn.

Vineyards won't be the only things flourishing when the sun shines on the fertile city of Sebastopol, Calif., in Sonoma wine country. The liberal stronghold of fewer than 8,000 residents this week became California's second city to require that new homes be outfitted with panels to produce solar energy.

A vote by the City Council on Tuesday evening came less than two months after a similar program was approved in Lancaster, Calif., a conservative desert city with 150,000 residents nearly 400 miles away.

From the Santa Rosa Press Democrat:

Here's the best way to start a visit to New York City's New Amsterdam Market: a small nibble of a hearty Finnish Ruis bread round, made with rye from Upstate New York and topped with a slice of locally made cheese. From there, you might sample some dishes by a chef promoting his latest cookbook; grab a loaf of “multi-ethnic” bread made by Hot Bread Kitchen, a social enterprise designed to empower its minority and low-income employees; snack on locally made grass-fed beef jerky; and wash it all down with Brooklyn-brewed kombucha.

Since 2005, every Sunday has seen the parking lot of the former Fulton Fish Market site at Lower Manhattan’s South Street Seaport transformed into a bustling agora selling artisanal foods made with locally sourced ingredients from sustainable farms -- all this, beneath the roar of an interborough highway.

Those who come -- a small but dedicated group, about 50,000 annually -- not only love to shop locally and organically, but also appreciate the history of the site. As far back as the late 17th century, the South Street Seaport was a place for Long Island farmers to sell their produce, and over the course of 200 years it became a main port for fish and seafood. The Fulton Fish Market building, now vacant, was built by Mayor LaGuardia in the 1930s.

But now, the New Amsterdam Market is likely facing its last summer at the Seaport. In its place, the Howard Hughes Corporation plans to build a complex of luxury hotels, high-rises, and a concert venue. The city council, which recently voted to approve the company's plan for the Seaport, is calling the development a victory for local food, but while the Hughes Corp has plans for some kind of “food market” that uses local and regional ingredients, the organizer of New Amsterdam will likely not be involved, and it is unclear if any of the current vendors will, either.

Perhaps it’s not news that real estate is king in New York, or that the city’s government will always go with big money and big development over small business. But what’s new here is that the city and its business partner have co-opted the language of the local food movement in promoting their development visions.

At a time when local food boosterism is growing in mayor’s offices across the country (Seattle and L.A. recently passed general local food ordinances, and Chicago is launching an urban ag program), New Amsterdam Market is a lesson that other cities can learn from. If they want to hang on to their foothold in the urban environment, small businesses in the local food world are going to have to cultivate relationships with city governments, and anticipate encroaching development, as part of their business strategy.

In terms of infrastructure, Venice is maybe not a world leader. (Enough with the canals, guys.) But when it comes to efficient green transportation, a human-powered gondola is pretty great. But Venice's historic gondolas are in trouble -- and you can help.

If the definition of insanity is making the same mistakes over and over, then many cities have taken a certifiable approach to securing their water supplies -- and they need some radical therapy before taking the big economic, ecological, and human hits that come with a permanent state of thirst.

That’s the conclusion from a new study in the journal Water Policy, whose authors compared the water supply histories of four cities -- San Diego, Phoenix, San Antonio, and Adelaide, Australia. Among the lessons learned? Urban water conservation, recycling, and desalination aren't silver bullets. In fact, the best solution may lie upstream with farmers -- saving just 5-10 percent of agricultural irrigation in upstream watersheds could satisfy a city’s entire water needs.

But the time to act is now, argues Brian Richter, a senior freshwater scientist at The Nature Conservancy and the study’s lead author -- he says a global urban water crisis is already here. Below, Richter tells us more about what cities need to do to say on the right side of dry.

Q. Many cities take a similar pattern of water development, according to your research -- going from exhausting local surface and groundwater supplies to importing water to implementing water conservation to finally recycling water or desalination. Why is this pattern unsustainable?

A. When we overuse a freshwater source, we set ourselves up for disaster. Each of the cities we reviewed in our study has contributed to the drying of a major river or important groundwater spring. That has obvious ecological impacts and social consequences -- it affects livelihoods and human health by compromising fish production, concentrating pollution, or curtailing recreational activities.

Our research is revealing that water scarcity also causes severe economic losses by limiting or disrupting agricultural, industrial, and energy production. Texas lost nearly $8 billion in agriculture last year due to water shortages; electricity generation from hydropower dams on the Colorado River in 2010 dropped by 20 percent due to water shortages. Some estimates suggest that China may be losing $39 billion each year due to crop damage and lessened industrial production, and hundreds of thousands of people around the globe are being forced to move due to water shortages.

Because these impacts are so pervasive and damaging, we need to begin investing in water supply approaches that don’t just minimize these adverse impacts but instead begin to reverse them.

On Tuesday, voters in Youngstown, Ohio, gave the fracking industry carte blanche to continue pumping chemicals into the ground beneath them and pumping natural gas out.

A city charter amendment that would have outlawed hydraulic fracturing in the city was rejected by voters, with the unofficial final vote tally showing 3,821 votes against and 2,880 in favor. The ballot measure would also have banned new pipelines in the city and prevented oil-field waste from being transported through the city.

A fracking boom is underway in Ohio, especially in its east, where Youngstown is located. But the boom has not brought with it many jobs for Ohioans, despite promises otherwise, as most of the work is being done by specialists who've come in from other states. It has, however, brought with it water pollution problems.

Opposition to the ballot measure was spearheaded by a business-backed group calling itself Mahoning Valley Coalition for Job Growth and Investment. That group was formed especially to defeat the ballot measure, and it easily outspent the measure's backers. In campaigning, the business group had described the ballot measure as unconstitutional, far-reaching, and unenforceable, and claimed it would send the wrong kind of message to the business community.

West Side Rag reports that this unfortunate driver tried to get to New Jersey by turning west onto the stairs leading down to Riverside Park. The pedestrian stairs. Because cars can't climb stairs. Which you know, and I know, but apparently this guy and more importantly his GPS did not know.

I’ve never thought of myself as much of a rebel. You generally won’t find me smashing car windows or setting garbage cans aflame. (Let’s get real: You probably won’t find me speeding. Such are the depths of my rule-following nature.) But I realize now that all along, I’ve just been waiting for the right weapon with which to battle The Man.

Wildflowers, of course. More precisely: ping-pong ball-size globs of clay and compost laced with wildflower seeds called seed bombs (or green grenades -- military nomenclature is a must). The other day, I stood in front of a fenced-off lot on a busy stretch of asphalt, fingering the tiny seed arsenal I’d packed into a Ziploc bag. I looked back and forth, took a deep breath, and let one fly over the chain links; the ball came to rest on a scrubby patch of dirt in the sun. “Take that!” I muttered under my breath.

Finally, I was beginning to understand the rebel thrill. This must be what Marlon Brando felt like.

As with all great parties, I heard Friday night’s bike fiesta before I found it. Pedaling my old-school aluminum Trek road bike up one of Baltimore’s main drags -- in a black bow tie, ruffled shirt, and cummerbund, naturally -- I suddenly caught Whitney Houston’s “I Want to Know What Love Is” blasting from a nearby park. And then, up the hill a little further, I saw the 20-, 30-, and, yes, 40-something couples in retro tuxes, chiffon and satin gowns, with flowers in their lapels and corsages on their wrists, posing for pictures next to decorated bicycles.

There were even women with tiaras atop their helmets. One friend managed to dangle a sparkling disco ball off the front of her handlebars -- lit by her bicycle light once we started riding and the sun went down. Close to 1,000 people in all. Not everyone, but most, dressed to the nines for that once-in-a-lifetime occasion.

Welcome to Bike Party: Bike Prom edition, part of a burgeoning movement nationwide that is putting the fun into bicycling activism.

Last April, the traditional, anarchy-inspired Critical Mass rides here evolved (how long can something be both traditional and anarchist?) into the newer, safer, more traffic-friendly -- and happier -- last-Friday-of-every-month Baltimore Bike Party. Critical Mass rides, for the unfamiliar, date back two decades and have taken place in cities all over the world. They are historically political, punk, and confrontational in manner.

Bike Party, by contrast, is gentle, '60s-style protest/celebration. It’s theater, activism, bicycling, and social gathering all at once. Or, as I overheard one woman tell a girlfriend on a ride: “It’s like everything I love rolled into one ... and it’s going out on Friday night to a great party.”

Artist Dave Delisle draws public transit systems as Super Mario and Mario Kart maps. Man, subways would be so much more awesome with the promise of fire flowers or invincibility -- you'd never miss a train if you could get a star! On the other hand, though, it would be kind of frustrating to show up to work and be told "sorry, but your job is in another office building."