Many rural areas are facing strong urban and demographic growth. This article focuses more specifically on rural areas subject to strong demographic growth and land pressure due to the influence of a border metropolis. We have chosen to study the French rural areas on the outskirts of Geneva and Luxembourg. We analyze collective action and practices of urban planning actors.We describe the spatial planning issues that actors face in rural areas. How spatial planning practices and actions are characterized in rural areas under the influence of border cities? How do public spatial planning actors manage and steer urban development in these rural areas?We show that the cross-border growth situation leads to particular regulation problems and that public actors respond at both local and state level. We highlight specificities of spatial planning situations concerning these rural areas: the difficulty of intervening at the source of growth dynamics because of the border; the importance of cooperation practices between public actors at different scales; the combination of generic and ad-hoc spatial planning instruments in order to control growth and its undesired effects.