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In the name of sustainable development, cities should be made compact, that is to say, denser and less prone to urban sprawl. This requirement is often presented in terms of a purely technological aspect. The objective of this article is to highlight the political and social stakes of the policies aiming at making cities more compact. We propose to analyze this question in terms of metropolitan geopolitics. The diversity of metropolitan areas is indeed not only morphological: it is also economic, social, and political. These issues are discussed in the case of the metropolitan region of Lyon. How do the highly diversified territories that constitute this extended metropolis receive the evolution of the national legislation on urban sprawl and the “compact city?” Within a metropolitan region, how is the share of an urban consolidation that is perceived either as a burden or as a resource according to the different types of territories negotiated? Finally, how are the political compromises between the territories rebuilt at the scale of the extended metropolis? The first part of this article is devoted to the analysis of face-to-face relations between the metropolitan core and the peri-urban areas. The second part deals with the “sub-metropolitan” negotiation of urban consolidation policies, partly constrained by the progressive institutionalization of peri-urban territories.