The juxtaposition of Benton Harbor’s impoverished population and its two rising monuments to wealth — all wedged into a little more than four square miles — make it almost a caricature of economic disparity in America. But at the same time, it offers a window into one possible future for towns across the country, places that can no longer support their own economies or take care of their citizens and may ultimately have no choice but to turn their fate over to private industry and nonprofits. The way things are going, more and more states may start to look like Michigan, and more and more towns may start to look like Benton Harbor.

Benton Harbor’s City Hall, a sturdy-looking, red-brick structure on the fringe of its small downtown, was built by the federal government as part of a wave of public-works projects underwritten by the New Deal to help lift the country out of the Depression. A dedication plaque dated 1937 still hangs in the building’s small, sour-smelling lobby, surrounded by mundane symbols of the city’s decline: an “Out of Order” sign taped to a water fountain, an empty job-postings board, a case containing municipal-sports-league trophies, several of whose figurines are missing limbs.

I was greeted there one morning by the man who now runs Benton Harbor, a 67-year-old African-American man with a salt-and-pepper mustache named Joseph Harris. “Life is beautiful, isn’t it?” Harris said, smiling widely as he led me up the stairs to an empty office that he had just repossessed from the mayor.

Harris is Benton Harbor’s “emergency manager.” He was first sent to the town in April 2010 under a law that provided the state with limited authority to intervene in the financial affairs of failing cities. His power grew exponentially last spring when Governor Snyder and the state’s Republican Legislature passed Public Act 4, which allows emergency managers to renegotiate or terminate contracts, change collective-bargaining agreements, even dissolve local governments (subject to the governor’s approval). They have almost unfettered control over their respective cities. This approach to governing is still in its infancy, but if it proves successful in Benton Harbor and elsewhere, emergency managers could be dispatched to troubled municipalities across the state. Snyder has even made it clear that Detroit is a strong candidate for takeover.

There are emergency managers now ensconced in four cities and one school district in Michigan. All have taken some aggressive measures, but none have made as public an impact as Harris. He has fired numerous city administrators and employees and merged Benton Harbor’s police and fire departments. He didn’t just kick the mayor and city commissioners out of their offices; he also issued a directive prohibiting them from doing anything other than call meetings to order, record their minutes and adjourn them.

Benton Harbor has since become an unlikely cause for Rachel Maddow, who has railed repeatedly against the state’s seizure of the town — “Ground Zero for American politics,” as she calls it. The Rev. Jesse Jackson has taken up the cause, too, comparing Benton Harbor to Selma, circa 1965, because of the disenfranchisement of its largely black electorate. Stephen Colbert, for his part, offered a mock tribute to Harris: “I say good for him, because the people of Benton Harbor brought this on themselves. . . . Benton Harbor’s elected officials are incompetent, therefore, by electing them, the voters are incompetent. So they should lose their democracy.”

If all of this sounds like yet more negative attention for Benton Harbor, Harris, the former chief financial officer for the city of Detroit, doesn’t seem the least bit bothered by it. Blissfully free of the checks and balances of democratic governments, he is living the dream of every frustrated city administrator. “I believed I could fix Detroit,” Harris told me. “But almost every time I made a recommendation to the mayor, politics got in the way. Here, I don’t have to worry about whether the politicians or union leaders like what I’m doing. I have to worry about whether it’s the right thing to do. That’s the only thing that should matter. I love this job.”