Comparing Great City With Global City

In the present era، with globalization and rapid changes in the economy of cities such as Shanghai، Hong Kong، and Tokyo etc. the new concept of «great city» is emerging in the area of urban studies. This concept is in direct competition with Old World cities (like New York، London and Paris) and attracted the attention of many scholars. Accordingly، the subject of this study is to compare the great city with global city. For this purpose، at first، the concept of globalization and its characterization is presented from the perspective of scholars such as Sassen، Friedman، Short and Castells. Then the concept of great city، its characteristics and similarities and differences with these two concepts is highlighted. Therefore، this paper tries to find answers to this basic question: what differences and similarities are there between the great city and global city? In the course of finding a scientific answer to the above question، results obtained with the use of the documentary method show that a great city is one which is based on sustainable development model، with an emphasis on urban governance having economical، social capitals and strong environments which aims to get endogenous development، while the theory of global city focuses on the exogenous development model and lacks the objective measures، local based procedure and a balanced developing approach. That is why the global world intensifies the polarization and worsens the environmental crises.