Several weeks in Moscow

My first three weeks in Moscow are over, so I would like to elaborate more mature thoughts about the city. As I already started writing about differences between cities I would like to continue this narration. But this time I will compare and contrast Moscow to Toronto.

It is difficult to compare Moscow and Toronto because they are completely different. If we look in general then we can say that Toronto is alike many modern American cities with tall skyscrapers in business downtown area and small building in suburban area. Meanwhile Moscow has different structure. It has a lot of small and historical buildings in its downtown area (Sadovoe koltso). Presence of soviet architecture is noticeable in the city. But the city is apparently in transformation, as it looses its authenticity and becomes more Americanized. There is a new business district located near the historical downtown of Moscow. It has new tall skyscrapers to attract foreign companies. Also to make it more accessible it was has a new subway line. In my opinion this is good and bad, as there are many arguments pro and against globalisation. As when we globalise we are loosing uniqueness, but at the same time gain access to the new ‘global world’.







Toronto (tall) vs. Moscow (wide)


If we look at micro level then we will notice more differences. I would like to elaborate more on Moscow recycling program or actually its apparent absence. Funny, but one of the first differences that were noticed by me was recycling program in the city. I saw some symbols of the previous attempts to introduce recycling. For instance, in the city-center (Sadovoe koltso) I saw machines accepting cans and bottles. Hence, it was a monetary attempt to attract citizens to recycling program. However, many of them seem to be broken and I have never seen anyone disposing a bottle or can in the machine. In reality for me it is more like a symbolic action rather than a real.

The first surprise is location of the garbage collecting machines. Why in the city downtown? It has no logic behind it. Those who live and work in the area are wealthy enough and few cents from disposing their cans and bottles won’t matter to them at all. Just simple presence of separate garbage collecting bins for bottles and cans coupled with city wide advertisement of recycling effort would make a difference. Those machines should be situated in poor areas where people might be willing to spend their time and effort to collect bottles/cans to dispose them. In my opinion it was waste of taxpayers’ money!

Living several weeks in Moscow presents me a unique opportunity to enrich my experience. I can see cultural, historical and social differences between Toronto and Moscow. The example of recycling program in Moscow allows me critically analyze different approaches used to tackle common problems. It gives me ideas of what can be successful and may not.