The sense of presence a user’s felt experience of “being here” rather than merely passing through is a decisive yet under operationalized quality of successful urban squares, and it is shaped substantially by the environmental features of the space. Although the literature on sense of place, environmental quality and urban vitality is rich, it offers few compact, replicable instruments that translate these ideas into an environment focused measure of presence suited to the historic square. This study addresses that gap by developing and adapting a model of sense of presence indicators for urban squares, foregrounding environmental features, and operationalizing it through a Human Subjective Evaluation (HSE) questionnaire. The research follows a four phase design: a systematic review derives a pool of candidate indicators from the presence, sense of place and environmental quality literatures; a two round fuzzy Delphi procedure with an expert panel screens and refines the pool through triangular fuzzy numbers and threshold de fuzzification; the retained indicators are translated into a five point HSE instrument; and the instrument is structured for onsite perceptual application, with Naghsh-e-Jahan Square in Isfahan proposed as the demonstration case. The model organizes presence around four environment centered criteria physical–spatial, sensory–environmental, social–functional and semantic–perceptual each resolved into measurable sub indicators and each weighted by the fuzzy Delphi consensus. Findings show that the four criteria form a coherent, hierarchically weighted structure in which physical–spatial and sensory–environmental features carry the largest illustrative weights, and that the HSE instrument renders the otherwise elusive notion of presence into a transferable, auditable measure. The study concludes that presence in urban squares is best modelled not as a single perception but as a weighted composite of environmental determinants mediated by subjective evaluation, offering urban designers a diagnostic tool and a research ready template for field validation.