Trade has since ancient times been a cornerstone of the origin and development of life in thecity and is until this day serving as a central function of the city’s attractiveness. Theattraction consists of, among other things, the jobs that diversity of services creates but alsothe lifestyle that the city offers in return. Consumption thus affects the city’s design, functionand use and vice versa, therefore there is also a strong relationship in the form of dependencebetween the city and commerce. When commerce moves out of town to external shoppingcenters and this said relationship gets disturbed, it leads to social, ecological and not leasteconomic consequences. Ecological and social consequences can for example be aboutmotorism and its carbon emissions and an increased dependence for the less well-off. Whileeconomic consequences can relate to the risk of business being depleted as competingdiscount store chains push prices towards small businesses. This bachelor’s thesis consists of a comparative case study of the two Swedish municipalitiesUddevalla and Landskrona, where both qualitative and quantitative methods for the analysisare combined. The qualitative part of the analysis is carried out through an idea analysis ofmunicipal policy documents that concern the general planning. In addition, the quantitativepart consists of an attribute analysis and deals with various percentage changes in trade fromthe year 2010-2015. This in order to examine how different political community planningideals appear in the documents, this in order to be able to draw conclusions about whether theplanning ideals and the actual development between central and external trade correlate. The case study showed that Landskrona, which has taken a stand against commercialestablishments outside the city center, has a trade development that is in line with themunicipality’s planning ideal where trade is moved back to the inner city from the otherinternal trade area. Uddevalla pursues a similar line in the matter that the greatest focusshould be on the establishment of central trade. However, the development does notcorrespond with the municipality’s planning ideal regarding trade as the central tradedecreases during the examined period in favor of external trade. Despite these broadly similarplanning ideals, it can be concluded that even if the development in Uddevalla is not in linewith the municipalities’ vision in the same way as in Landskrona, Uddevalla has the biggestfinancial success.