Socio-economic development, in any society, includes many productive activities excluded in conventional economic analyses. This paper aims to critically uncover, explore and discuss how productive activities included in societal development are hidden by a monetary bias. By doing so, the paper strives to initiate a critical conceptual discussion related to what is generally indentified as weaknesses and relevant policies in regional development. The goal is to reach beyond convetional economic analyses to unlock and develop implications for conceptual models that can exted perceptions of societal development with its political, temporal and spatial meaning. The paper proceeds as follows: Firstly, through some illustrative empirical examples, uncover the meanings of ´economic´ activities from completely different contexts; Secondly, to explore the more general implications of a perspective/approach, inspired by Hägerstrand, which emphasizes political implications in time and space; Finally, to point out a conceptual discussion that enhances a broadened perspective for societal regional development that reaches beyond the conventional meanings of economic development.