What Living in Macedonia Has Taught Me About Inequality, So Far

(That Statistics Never Will)

When people talk about inequality, they usually reach for numbers.

GDP per capita. Employment rates. Development indexes that rank countries on a global ladder — as if progress is something you climb toward, rung by rung, until you finally arrive. These metrics are useful. They help governments allocate resources and institutions compare outcomes. They offer a sense of order in a world that feels uneven.

But inequality does not live in a spreadsheet.

It lives in the physical effort required to get through a day. It lives in how long it takes to complete basic tasks — and how much energy those tasks quietly demand. It lives in which bodies are accommodated by design, and which are expected to adapt without question.

I began to understand this not through research or policy papers, but through living in Veles, North Macedonia, and learning what it means to navigate daily life inside its systems.

Inequality Is Experienced Before It Is Measured

The neighborhood where I live sits above the city, built into steep hills with narrow streets and uneven pathways. Sidewalks appear and disappear. Ramps are nonexistent. Accessibility is not a design principle here — it is an afterthought, if it is considered at all.

Carrying groceries home has become a daily exercise in planning. I pace myself. I redistribute weight between hands. I stop halfway up the hill, sometimes more than once. Some days it feels manageable; other days it feels heavy in ways that go beyond the physical.

Almost instinctively, my mind turns outward:

How do elderly residents make this climb every day?
How do people with mobility limitations navigate a neighborhood that offers no accommodation?
What does independence look like in a place that requires constant physical endurance just to exist within it?

These questions don’t come from abstraction. They are embedded in the landscape itself.

Urban geographers have long argued that inequality is spatial — shaped by the design of cities, infrastructure, and access to movement. Henri Lefebvre’s idea of the “right to the city” suggests that space is never neutral; it reflects whose lives are prioritized. Living here has made that theory tangible. The hills quite literally shape who can move freely and who cannot — who is visible in public life, and who is quietly confined.

When Safety Narratives Replace Structural Truths

During my residency interview with the local inspector responsible for foreign relations, he did something unexpected. After reviewing my documents, he handed me his personal phone number and told me to call if I ever felt unsafe.

He described the neighborhood where I live as the most dangerous in Veles.

Later, when I shared this conversation with my local counterpart, he paused before responding.

“It’s not the most dangerous,” he said.
“It’s the most poor.”

That distinction has stayed with me.

In development discourse — and in public life more broadly — poverty is often recoded as risk. Areas that lack investment are described as unsafe rather than underserved. This language shift subtly transfers responsibility: from systems to individuals, from policy failures to personal behavior.

Sociologist Loïc Wacquant describes this as territorial stigmatization — the process by which entire neighborhoods are marked by reputation rather than reality. Living here, I see how quickly perception replaces nuance, and how easily fear obscures history.

Words shape policy. Labels shape investment. And once a place is framed as “dangerous,” neglect becomes easier to justify.

Accessibility as a Development Issue

In international development, accessibility is often discussed in the language of legislation or service provision. But accessibility is also deeply physical — and deeply local.

A clinic that exists but cannot be reached easily is not truly accessible. A social service that requires navigating steep terrain, stairs, or unreliable transport excludes people long before paperwork enters the picture.

The World Health Organization estimates that over one billion people globally live with some form of disability. Yet disability inclusion remains siloed — treated as a specialized issue rather than a core development concern woven into urban planning, transportation, and housing.

Living where I live has made one thing unmistakably clear: access is not binary. It is layered. It is contextual. And it is shaped by infrastructure decisions made slowly, over decades.

Inequality here is not only economic.
It is architectural.

Why GDP and Rankings Fall Short

North Macedonia is often categorized as a “developing country,” a label rooted in post–World War II economic frameworks that prioritized industrial output and income growth. GDP, still one of the most cited indicators of development, measures economic activity — not lived experience.

Economist Amartya Sen has long critiqued this narrow framing, arguing instead for a capability approach that focuses on what people are actually able to do and be. Living in Veles has made that argument feel less theoretical and more obvious.

GDP cannot tell you:

how far someone must walk uphill to buy food
whether aging in place is physically possible
how disability intersects with geography
how dignity is preserved through informal support systems

Alternative measures like the UN’s Human Development Index attempt to widen the lens by including health and education. But even these tools struggle to capture spatial inequality — the way terrain, infrastructure, and design quietly govern daily life.

What is missing is proximity.

The Difference Between Presence and Distance

Before Peace Corps, I understood inequality intellectually. I could cite statistics. I could discuss frameworks. I could debate policy.

Now, I understand inequality bodily.

I feel it in my shoulders carrying groceries uphill. I notice it in who lingers in public spaces and who does not. I hear it in the language used to describe neighborhoods — and in what that language avoids naming.

Living here has made me deeply cautious of solutions designed from afar. International development often rewards scale, speed, and quantifiable outcomes. But inequality shaped by geography, infrastructure, and history does not resolve quickly — and rarely cleanly.

Sometimes the most ethical response is not intervention, but listening.

Rethinking What Progress Means

Development is often framed as forward motion — faster, easier, more efficient.

But living in Veles has complicated that narrative.

Progress, I am learning, must also be measured by who is included. Who can move through a space independently. Who is accounted for in planning decisions. Who is forced to adapt — and at what cost.

This reframing does not reject data or policy. It asks that they be grounded in lived reality — in bodies, in places, in daily routines.

Common Ground

If there is common ground to be found, it is this: inequality is not abstract. It is physical. It is spatial. It is lived — often quietly — in ways charts cannot capture.

Understanding it requires more than numbers. It requires presence. Humility. And a willingness to question the assumptions built into our metrics.

Living in Veles has not given me easy answers. But it has sharpened my awareness — and in a field that often moves too quickly toward solutions, that awareness feels like the most responsible place to begin.