In this paper I will investigate spatial scale as one vital aspect that needs to be more carefully addressed in discussions on ‘sustainable urban forms’. First, I discuss problems of spatial scales in the light of recent urban transformations, focusing on the Malmö-Lund region. Second, I discuss the discourse of ‘sustainable urban forms’, pointing at some scale related problems that need to be more carefully addressed .In the third, and main part of the article, I discuss plans and projects of urban development in Malmö, focusing and elaborating on three tendencies of scale stabilisation: territorial, geometrical and hierarchical. Concluding, I suggest that if we want research on sustainable urban forms to inform us on how to build better urban environments, we need to think of it is as a tool for integrating issues and problems that formerly were specialised or sub-optimized, counteracting splintering urbanism; one foundational issue of such an effort would be a multi-scalar approach that does not handle scale as a pre-given entity.