Abstract
The historical fabric of Yazd as a living heritage, inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List, has continuously lost population from 1990 to 2020. This research aims to determine the factors affecting the people's decision to leave, the impact of each factor, and the relationship between the variables. According to the results, the main factors in the outflow from the historical fabric included the quality of the environment, the quality of access to services, cultural status, the settlement of non-local residents and its social consequences, policy-making and managing the urban services, legal issues in property-owning, residents' economic status, and the weakening of the originality of the area. However, from among the above-mentioned elements, the social and managerial factors were the major determinant ones. Compared to the “pull effects”, the “push effects” from inside were shown to exert a stronger influence on residents and push them to leave. To plug the population flow from the historical fabric, it is necessary to find a solution to the related social/managerial problems. The policy of touristification of historical fabrics should be changed from a goal to a means of empowering the locality of residence and preserving natives