Detroit, The Motor City.
At various times Detroit also earns the title Murder City. With hundreds of homicides each year, over half of them narcotics related.
This could be related to other financial problems.
The city of Detroit filed for bankruptcy in July 2013.
But the writing was clear before this, in 2009 General Motors filed for bankruptcy. General Motors and Ford are the two mainstays of the automobile industry of Detroit.
Henry Ford established "Fordism" in Detroit, mass production combined with competitive pricing and high labor wages.
The Model T Ford in 1908 was the foundation stone of Ford's ultimate $188 billion dollar empire. He also brought prosperity to many others, offering $5 pay per day in 1914 which was double the usual daily pay, if you passed his Social Department's tests.
These measures cause a massive influx of highly paid workers which maintained Ford's competitiveness and industrial development.
This was the reason for Detroit, its purpose, to make cars competitively for the mass market.
Like Angkor Wat, that purpose was lost.
In the 1970s there were Renaissance programs to try and rejuvenate Detroit, but which only worked on a cosmetic level. The focus on building for a competitive mass market was lost and how that displayed was generally as a determination to keep building large cars, when globalization and the resultant overseas competitors were showing people wanted different cars.
Ford once said that customers could have any colour they wanted, as long as it was black. Black was his preference because it dried fastest and let the cars move along production lines faster.
But with competition one cannot have that attitude.
Angkor Wat had a religious purpose and lost it, Detroit had a manufacturing purpose and lost it.