The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Revitalize I Resettle: How Main Street USA Can Offer New Beginnings for America’s Climate-Displaced by Hillary Brown

Episode Date: January 7, 2026

Revitalize I Resettle: How Main Street USA Can Offer New Beginnings for America’s Climate-Displaced by Hillary Brown Hillarybrown.net https://www.amazon.com/Revitalize-Resettle-Beginnings-Americas-Climate-Displaced/dp/B0DZDZRJDH A Bold New Chapter for Reviving Our Rural Towns and Small Cities: Helping in Future to Resettle Our Own Climate Refugees Revitalize I Resettle explores of two of America’s pervasive challenges-the economic decline and depopulation of rural towns and small legacy cities and the impending mass displacement of Americans due to increasing climate chaos. It envisions ways forward in the nexus between these two concerns. The book offers a compelling perspective on the need to address the urban-rural rift. It presents well-conceived, holistic strategies for the revitalization of these places, aiming to restore rural economic vigor and advance sustainability. It also looks ahead to the prospect of climate-driven migration. It paints a sobering picture of the looming crisis yet also provides a glimmer of optimism. It suggests that by improving rural prosperity and social equity, we can establish resilient communities in parts of the country that can safely and willingly welcome and resettle many of those displaced by climate change in the not-too-distant future. Revitalize I Resettle is not merely a theoretical exploration; it is a call to action. The book provides a pragmatic approach to these complex issues, suggesting creative solutions that are equitable, resilient, and adaptable. The author argues that rejuvenated heartland towns and small cities can not only mitigate the effects of socioeconomic disparity but also provide tangible support for many Americans dislodged by the climate crisis in the coming decades. Through its in-depth analysis and examples of innovative revitalization strategies, the book serves as a blueprint for building a more resilient and equitable future for all Americans. In essence, Revitalize I Resettle is a crucial and timely resource.

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We're going to be talking about her hot book came off the presses in March 18th, 2025. It is entitled, Revitalize, Resettle, how Main Street USA can offer new beginnings for America's climate displaced. Hillary Brown joins us on the show. We're going to get into it with her and find out some of her insights

and some of the things that can help make the world better, it sounds like. Hilary Brown is a professor emerita at the City College, City University of New York. She previously directed its interdisciplinary graduate program in urban sustainability. Her recent book, Revitalize, Resettle,

how Main Street USA can provide new beginnings for America's displaced, climate displaced, examines how our population may be shifting over the coming decades and calls for strategic planning and how we resettle those dislodged by climate adversity. Welcome to the show. How are you, Hillary? Hey there, Chris. Thanks very much for having me, and hello to your audience, your faithful audience. I'm looking forward to the discussion. We're looking forward to have you. It's on to have you as well. Give us your dot-coms.

Where do you want people to find you on the interwebs or social media, etc? Well, I have a website and under the website it lists the books, but the URL is www-H-L-L-A-R-R-B-R-W-N, H-I-L-A-R-W-N, all one word, dot net. So give us a 30,000 overview what this book is. Yeah, okay. So I'm looking at two of America's critical change. challenges. First is how to counter the protracted economic decline and depopulation of many of America's rural towns and small legacy cities. It's kind of a downward spiral. And then the second

is an emerging reality, of course, thanks to increasing weather extremes, the coming mass displacement of Americans, both coastal and inland, I'll talk about that, that are looking for more secure places to restart their lives. So the book envisions ways forward in the nexus of these two concerns. In other words, how many climate favorable, small willing towns and cities, particularly those that are interested in revitalization, how they see it in their interest to take in some of America's displaced. They see newcomers will help rebuild the population, restore the economy, and bring new skills.

So in a nutshell, I argue for repopulating many of those wonderful places across America. So is your, and we talk a lot about these terms Main Street, Wall Street, I don't know if there's big box companies or big box stores. I guess maybe. Give us your definition of what Main Street means, and we'll just lay a foundation on that. Sure. Traditionally, Main Streets were where people would gather, the community would come. There was all kinds of enterprise. There was government. There might be churches and courthouses. And that I remember from my youth when I went to college in Ohio. They were wonderful small towns. And the main streets really were the commercial center, where, also,

and farmers or other workers from away would come. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And then things really kind of changed in the 80s, where Wall Street kind of took over, big box stores, big box this, putting a lot of these Main Street, small businesses, mom-and-pop stores usually,

that were the backbone of the economy, kind of out of business. You know, you saw a lot of Main Streets dry up and become ghost towns. I mean, there's still many I can see as they go around. And climate change displacement, I mean, it's a real thing. I mean, we're really starting to see some wildness go on. Where my mom lives, I go back and forth between Vegas.

And she, there's no snow here. I don't know if you've been seen reporting, but we've got like no snow. And it's January 7th, 6th, right, 7th right now. And so all these people are making these videos, They're flying in from, you know, all over the world, and they paid for these vacations to ski, and there's no snow. And they're not refundable vacations, evidently. And they're just skiing in like a little bit of fake snow they made and then just mud. Some of the snow got sent to New York.

We've had two lively snowfalls. It's always those people in New York. What's that? What's that salsa commercial? New York City. Anyway, yeah, but it's not enough to go around this year, I guess. Yeah. One of my case studies I'll talk about later is a town that lost its ski area, basically.

Which town was that? A town of West Windsor, Vermont, small town adjacent to a ski area, that, for lack of snow, apparently, and other reasons, it closed. And the town really lost its population, real estate prices dropped, and eventually the town hard enough to engage with an NGO who helped them actually buy the ski area and revitalize it. And so the, you know, the population came back, the town, real estate came back. So there's a can-do mentality in many of these places that I rely on. We had CBS News National Correspondent Jonathan Vigliotti on the show a couple years ago

and he wrote a book called Before It's Gone, Stories from the Front Lines of Climate Changes in America. And CBS would send him in to do interviews whenever there was like a climate change in one of these small towns and they really get destroyed by some things that can happen, a landslide, you know, some sort of event. They don't have a lot of the expensive resources the expensive, you know, they don't have the tax base to be able to

have the resources and stuff. And so he really documented that. And so you're, to my understanding, I'm asking you this as a question, your theory in the book that you espouse is that what's going to happen is climate change, rising waters, hurricanes, you know, we just had a wildfires, you know, we saw the wildfires in California. And then I think last year we saw it, didn't we see a hurricane or tornado come in off the, out of the ocean, a hurricane? And we're like, hurricanes will come out of the Pacific?

What the hell? Well, I guess technically. They call it something else. But yeah, it was forceful like that. Yeah. And we're just seeing these extremes, like the snow. I mean, it's, I'm kind of freaking out because I'm used to there being snow when I visit my mom for the holidays, you know? And, and it's just, it's cold.

It's mucky. You know, it's cold and dry. Yeah, and this impacts probably the future of the water for the next year for everybody. You know, Calph, the biggest in California downstream from us. The West is being parched and has no snowpack for recreation or for farmers. Yeah. And so your theory is some of these places, maybe California, Florida, coastal places with rising seas and tides and extreme weather. more people might start moving inland where there's higher ground.

So is that the right assumption? Well, that is, you know, just to throw us some figures by the turn of the century, we can predict anywhere from, you know, 4 million to 13 million who have been displaced or dislodged by weather extremes. And that's just the coast. So you have inland, riverine flooding, you have. heat in the southwest and you have the northwest wildfires so it's it's coming at us and it really suggests that we're going to have you know some major population realignment by then if not before

and it would make sense i mean i would florida's a nice place but i wouldn't want to live there with all the hurricanes and alligators i'm kind of against alligators too and crocodiles They wouldn't be both. But, you know, ironically, and I want to get this in, because in the last decade or so, the prior decade, Americans were moving to places that were considered at risk from climate. A lot of people move to Florida, even though Floridians believe in climate change or they know about it, but still people are pouring in. And then you've got people in, you know, in Texas, in the hot and humid places. So counterintuitively, we're going in the wrong direction. Yeah, I mean, even Texas has horrible hurricanes and I don't know if they have tornadoes.

Are they part of tornadoes? Well, Oklahoma certainly does. Yeah, the tornado alley and stuff. And, you know, these things are going to do. So is your pitch to, is the book of Pills? to small cities and Main Street USA-type businesses to go, how can we maybe offer maybe benefits to move to our places, bring business back in, bring...

Absolutely. Because, you know, that's some of these small towns that I see, you know, when I'm driving or going through the landscape of America, you see these small towns and you're like, how the hell are they supporting themselves? Or sometimes like the Walmart's the number one employer in the town. And Walmart, by the way, I believe dollar stores, I think, are expanding at this point. And as you know, that displaces local commerce.

Oh, yeah. And so, I mean, do boards of, you know, city councils need to lead the charge on this? Who does take the forefront? I do believe in local agency. I don't think you can impose from, you know, from without. they have to think about things like infill development or upgrades to their townscape that can lure new enterprises and in particular small and medium enterprises which are really the life-blood they don't necessarily need a big manufacturing center

they need diversity and they also can improve their anchor assets like their community centers or their libraries and a lot of these towns are doing this under their own steam. Oh, really? Yeah. I can talk to some examples maybe later on, but if you want to give some now, I mean, now that we've put it on the table, let's go ahead and broach it. Sure. Well, I think that I'll start with the town of Ord, ORD, by the turn of the last century, they had seen population decline, you know, closing of stores. And they really got together. and imposed a 1% sales tax that would go towards spurring downtown commerce, new commerce. They also founded a leadership academy, which would retrain people out of work,

as well as instill in youth an entrepreneurial spirit as well as civic connectedness. And they also rehabbed a lot of their empty places and made the best. available. And what they found after 10 years was they had a 55% increase in people between 30 and 34, which is the population you want to recruit because they bring their kids and refill the schools, etc. And lay down a future, too, if some of those kids may be staying. Sorry, yeah. I think that's important. You really want to stress the investment in the community and, you know, commitment to a local culture. And maybe this will happen. I know COVID really did a lot of that displacement that moving around that you were talking about. I know some of the favorites at that time,

I think people are moving back now. But some of the favorites were like Texas and Florida. I know Vegas is a favorite for, and those are all tax-free state. tax-free state. Absolutely. Lower housing costs, more job. Now, you mentioned that one city, they lowered, I think, the sales tax. This is kind of a hard. They raised the sales tax. Oh, they raised the sales tax. Plus that they could use to redevelop. Okay. All right, then. I mean, I imagine there's kind of a balance of some of these cities where they can't really lower their taxes like you can in, you know, Florida where you can just wipe out state taxes. Of course, if you're a city and a state, you're kind of stuck with whatever the state tax on it, right?

And so somehow you have to create benefits and I know some city, or I think probably all cities at this point, they have like a business development strategies and tax breaks they can give businesses. Do you think those are healthy to give tax breaks to? Oh, absolutely. I think that you have to rely on these tax credits, the tax incentive, something called tax incremental finance. financing, which creates some wealth to upgrade a district. There's historic preservation tax credits for many, many cities, and they're using those. So, yeah, we have to, you know, attract that private investment to these distressed communities. And tax credits are a great way

to get developers. And in fact, you know, we're seeing the real estate investment trusts to a large extent, starting to invest in these climate safer areas, which we'll get into describing them. They're working to help increase population in small towns. Well, you know, I went out to recently to a town called Eureka in Utah. Oh, Utah. And it's an old mining town. It was like an old silver mine. It was a boom town, you know, back of the day, that old story. And it's still very remote. It takes about an hour to drive out there and it's, you know, there's no 7-Elevens there. There's no Walmarts there. There's no big box anything there. In fact, everything's pretty old. The last time I was there, the main street, there's kind of like a strip of buildings, just like

Ord, Nebraska I pulled up here. And when I saw them last, I don't know, was it 10, 15 years ago, the whole Main Street was like dead. It was just like zero empty. No one was in the building. there's no businesses there maybe one or two and I went back recently to do photography I think two or three months ago and they had filled most of the front place up and it seemed to be thriving they were holding a little parade

it was kind of interesting given the size of the town and yeah so hopefully these small towns make a comeback and they're kind of the people in a small town are pretty nice people I find they're very interesting down to earth, sort of salt to the earth, Americana. Yeah, they're community-centric, and we've done a great disservice, I think, by not advocating resources to our rural areas. We're very urban-centric globally, but in particular in this country, you know, the philanthropy, corporate grants, and so on, rarely go to rural areas. And that has to change.

I think we really need a resurgence. We need to, you know, find ways to finance it. And we need to depend upon the locals to decide themselves how they're going to do it. Yeah. And probably, I guess, people in small towns need to maybe try and advocate lobby and do whatever they can to try and make their city more welcoming, get more people there. I don't know. I wonder if social media can help some small towns. I don't know if that's a thing.

So there was like Mount Morris is a tiny town in upstate New York, less than a thousand people. And they really had, you know, down at the heels, Main Street. So they worked with a county development group, and they went out and they advertised to developers. And they got a fairly progressive developer come in, and he actually rehabbed, rehabilitated, some 20 buildings on Main Street.

Oh, wow. And he created new housing in the empty of stories above the stores. And that's how he got his return on his investment from renting to people. So the town actually, you know, had some incoming population, some retired farmers moved back into town. And he made some rules also about how the stores had to stay open certain hours, how they had to change their display windows, and all of this was about making Main Street thriving and attractive. Ah, yeah, I mean, if you go see, you know, like I saw years ago,

the dead, you know, front Main Street, you know, that you don't want to invest in that. And it's hard to be motivated to do something like that. You know, cleaning that up and getting those shops, at least fill with somebody, you know. And I walked up and down the main street. Main Street went into shops and talked to people. And they were just the nicest folks, very down home.

They'd all talk to me. They were all welcoming. In fact, they were very welcoming. They were like, hey, we're glad you're here. You got any money? We got stuff to sell. And, you know, but that's the way the marketplace works in Main Street. But yeah, it's really a relationship.

I had really, I've often thought about doing a, we actually do this before COVID, where we travel a lot, we used to travel a lot before COVID and do events and stuff. So we traveled up big events like CES show and stuff. And I always wanted to drive through the older cities and do my photography there, but also interview on a podcast made for people in a small towns and ask them, you know, hey, why do you still live here? Why do you live here? What's kept you from moving away?

What do you love about this? What's the value of it? What's it like living in a town that's pretty small? What's dating like here? There's like a hundred people. Why we talk to be single? They can widen their horizons a little bit. But you're absolutely right.

It's things like the community connectedness and the culture of self-help and independence. You know, they're proud of their lifestyle, basically. Unfortunately, we've kind of looked down on that or looked away from it. Uh-huh. Yeah. It's a, they have an interesting lifestyle and the way that they live and the way that they do stuff and everything else. And yeah, it's pretty interesting. It looks like my phone is malfunctioning here. We're going to shut that off. That is not even supposed to be doing that. It won't shut up. So what else have, oh, the one thing I wanted to ask you about, we're evidently going to start flying really blind when it comes to climate. I don't know if you've, I'm sure you've heard about the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

They're trying to close it at the, at our current regime at the White House there. Those are you watching, it's 2025. If you're watching this 10 years from now on YouTube, from your dystopian basement where the Terminator AI robots are ruling over us. So what are some of your thoughts on that, man? If we don't know how bad this climate change is getting, we got some problems because we're not going to see, we're not going to see getting worse, because it is. We're without warning. We learned a lesson in Texas recently in the Florida. You know, unfortunately what we're doing, for example, the insurance companies are canceling, you know, home insurance, vulnerable places. Real estate

agents now are putting, you know, climate zip codes where there's climate insecurity. And so, yeah, we're seeing this slow change, which is going to, of course, speed up as climate change escalates, which it most certainly will be doing over the next several decades, unless we have some mighty about face. But that's neither here nor there. But, you know, I also want to call out, though, that there are a number of amazing NGOs who are in this space, who are working to undertake, like, place-sensitive, local wealth-building approaches. There's something called Main Street America. There's the idea of the rural New Deal. A couple of senators a while back wanted to have another homestead act

to bring people out to the mid-Mill West. But it is really the Main Street investments that are going to supercharge the resurgence. And I want to just stress that it is time for philanthropy and corporate giving to reinvest. They're woefully underinvested and to work together all these different entities to coordinate and integrate their resources and build capacity in these small places to transform themselves. So I think, you know, in the absence of federal action, action, and there's plenty of federal action that is undermining the health, wealth, and well-being of people living in small-town America, as we speak. We need alternative sources, and, you know, states will rise to the occasion, but we need more corporate funding and more foundation.

Do you see, like, do you see an issue with AI? Maybe AI can help small towns cut the edge. Let me say this about AI. Yes, in some ways, the problem is that many of these smaller towns don't have adequate broadband, right? And that's been clawed back for some places. But even worse, let me just interject that where are we building all of these data centers? We're building them in farmland. We're building them next to poor communities. And these are basically problematic in many ways from pollution and excessive energy, water use and noise.

So, yeah, I'm not too grateful to AI because we're just not thinking enough about how to do this. In Europe, they are taking measures to the impacts of these. Yeah. I know there was some, they were Bitcoin miners. they were building some of these industrial outfits outside of small towns and the small towns, the noise from

the fans, because they have to do a lot of cooling, the noise from the fans would just, you know, and these are small towns. They're just, it just bounces around the valley, the sound and stuff. And then... Many, many being planned. And there's

no control over how this is being done. Yeah. And probably no thought. They probably just see, well, it's a poor area. We'll just take advantage of it and keep on trucking and that's probably not the way to approach this. I mean, it's a great opportunity to revitalize Main Street.

What else do we talk about as we round up the show that maybe we want to discuss or get out on the audience? Well, I just want to reemphasize a few things. I think that you know, the extent to which you know, we've emphasized

so much about urbanization and what's important, important is that we seem to have forgotten that it's the world's rural regions that effectively makes city life possible because they provide water and energy and material. So they're really major contributors to urban wealth and well-being. And so we really cannot neglect them. We can't ignore the plight of America's rural places in decline. Yeah, because they may be our future the way the water rises. I mean, you need to move to Colorado.

It'll be a mile high. Yeah. You know, the book maps shows maps of some of the more desirable places. It overlays things like opportunities with those desirable places like renewable energy, like the major wind belt in the Midwest and plentiful access to sun in upstate New York and New England. Those towns can then have energy, affordability, and resiliency. Yeah.

Yeah. Pretty awesome. Now, let's go over some of the stuff you do at your website. I know you do some speaking, maybe some consulting and things like that. What are the offers you have over there? So I talk a lot about my several previous books. I'll mention maybe two. I think the one that is really most important and has seen a lot of use.

during the prior administration when we put so much money into infrastructure, was called Next Generation Infrastructure. Looked at somewhat unorthodox ways in which we can look at our energy, our water, our waste management, and commerce in sort of synergistic ways as a way of eliminating waste or reducing waste and decarbonizing. So that's something that I think is very important. And it also underpins the revitalized resettle book as well because it urges small towns to think about this kind of close-looped activity. You know, the other book, more recent book, looked at strategies that emerging economies could utilize to kind of leapfrog over fossil fuel.

use and start to pull together their, you know, their farming resources and together with energy and water and overcome their poverty. I imagine farms. Farms are things that are really struggling right now with the soybean issues and the tariffs and all that sort of stuff. The naturalization. The closure of family farms is absolutely epidemic. Yeah.

And it affects our food costs and everything. It's amazing to me how many people don't connect that. Let's get rid of all the immigrants. And then we're like, why are grocery prices higher? Yeah. Well, I don't see a lot of Gen Z kids who are playing Xbox all day out in the fields picking those strawberries. For some reason, they don't want to do it.

They want to be TikTok stars or something. You know, we've been really successful in the past when we brought in immigrants. to some of these places, and now, of course, we're, you know, sending them back home. And so we have vacancies in, you know, our meat industry, corn and soybean, and as you say, in all the varieties of food. So that's not anything we need to tamper with. And on top of that, you know, we have water problems in much of the heartland as well. Yeah, yeah. We can't have tacos get expensive, folks, because tacos are a vital part of our economy, at least in my belly. They are.

So as we go out, give people, Hillary, a final pitch out to pick up your book and where they can contact you to learn more, on your website, etc., etc. Yeah, well, I really, again, I would like to see us, in effect, rebalance America's prosperity map. And I think that some kind of a remix of our population can help achieve that. It can help strategically rejuvenate local economies, replenish school population. We have now the advent of remote work. So a lot of city people can be employed in these smaller places. But importantly, I just want to emphasize the importance of, you know, this remixed population, working together to build social capital,

to learn trust and gain better understanding. And in that way, I think we can help to reduce the urban rural divide and some of the resentment towards people in urban places. And I think that that's something we have to attend to, and I think it's an urgent call. And we really should start planning now. Yeah. Now is the time to do it.

Very far away. There's no time like now, but, you know, the things you invest in now are the things that will make a difference in the future. And, you know, we don't know what the future holds. I mean, like Manhattan and parts of Florida could be fully underwater. The storm seemed to be getting worse. Like I was, you know, I've never seen Utah with no snow. I mean, it's amazing. No, I've been here during snow season.

Yeah, we have feet of snow. Oh, yeah. It's hella ski, you know, there's like five or six ski resorts here, at least in the state. And I don't ski. I grew up in California on the beach and I'm just, I'm a beach kid. But it's too cold. But, you know, a lot of people love skiing. But it's just wild to see people make these videos. They're like, my tickets were non-refundable. So I came on the vacation anyway. And now I'm skiing in mud. It's just astounding. I mean, they're trying to do that artificial snow. snow thing and it isn't working very good. That's going to use that precious water that we need in it. And we don't have water because we're not going to snow melt after this. I don't know, maybe it'll just snow like a whole lot in February at this pace.

We'll just get like 50 feet of snow and then we'll have other problems. Well, it's been wonderful to have you on. Hillary, thank you for coming on the show. We certainly appreciate it. I thank you for having me and I thank the audience out there for listening. And my website again is www.w.hillary brown, two else, Hillary Brown, two L's, Hillary Brown, one word, dot nete, dot net. So thank you very much, Chris. Appreciate it. Thank you.

And thanks, Your Honors, for tuning in. Order of the book, wherever fine books are sold. It is entitled, Revitalize, Resettle, How Main Street, USA can offer new beginnings for America's Climate Displaced. And remote work is probably a really brilliant idea for them. I've often thought about if I ever moved again, I'd move someplace rural because I can do everything over the internet, but they have to have good internet. So that's absolutely. Thanks for much for tuning and go to goodreads.com, Fortresschuschristchristchristch, Chris Foss,

one on the TikTokity and all those crazy places in the internet. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you guys next. You've been listening to the most amazing, intelligent podcast ever made to improve your brain and your life. Consuming too much of the Chris Walsh Show podcast can lead to people thinking you're smarter, younger, and irresistible sexy. Consume in regularly moderated amounts. Consult the doctor for any resulting brain bleed. All right, there we go.