I do not see how scopes are related to a problem of memory leak. Let's say you have a Django middleware that is initialized outside the scope of a request. Let'

I do not see how scopes are related to a problem of memory leak. Let's say you have a Django middleware that is initialized outside the scope of a request. Let's say you decided to add some stats counter in that middleware and wrote a code like this: def __call__(self, request): client_ip = request.META['REMOTE_ADDR'] self.last_visitors.append(client_ip) ... This code follows your scoping rules but still leaks memory. So it looks like you don't understand why memory leaks occur. I explained somewhere in ancestor comment that to prevent leaks you either need a language with pure functions or reset environment on each request, none of which is possible in Python yet the latter is available for PHP users. With Django processing model any array can become the source of a memory leak. I have heard that Ruby and NodeJS developers often have to restart their applications every several hours because they even have no tools to find the source of a leak. The problem that does not exist in PHP by design.