Detroit

I have no real clue about the technical implications. For sure, lawyers and bankers will engorge themselves on the rotten carcasses of the defaulted contracts, and the creditors will get next-to-nothing.

The social side of things and state of the built environment are unbelievable. A living dystopia. One stat was more likely to go to prison than complete high school. The ambulances don't run. The police have lost control. The street lights don't work.

Maybe so, but the Detroit Tigers are one heck of a baseball team, with a shiny (relatively) new stadium and numerous athletes paid multi-million dollar salaries.  Is this a great country or what!

There are cities and towns in the UK which have no economic future and haven't done for years but what strikes me is the sheer chasm of difference in how hard and how far you can fall when you fall in the US. Yes, we have depressed cities which are a bit rough around the edges but nothing like on this scale of broad decline - economic, social and environmental. Not even close. Not saying it is easy for all in the UK - far from it. Just that it is definitely not as hard as it can be in the US.

Seeing the result of winner take all politics and economics.

Detroit is a monument to politician's central planning - they tried to make it Sweden and got Somalia instead.

The UK model is more like central planning than the US. In many of our struggling cities 1/3 of the jobs are provided by the state. However, if this and other state support were withdrawn these cities would almost certainly not undergo any economic miracle but instead become like Detroit also.

Which is what the state sought in the first place...politicians love serfs.