Hanging gardens, tinted towers, or an outdoor pool? The mayor of Paris has unveiled four revolutionary projects aimed at giving the symbolic heart of the capital, Les Halles, a total makeover.
A town hall committee will decide late June whether to erect a massive glass roof encompassing almost the entire area, or instead cover the district with hanging gardens, high glass towers or pools and rooftop walkways.
For centuries the site of the busy, smelly Les Halles food market known as "the belly of Paris," has been shabby, though entertaining. The district was renovated in the 1970s.
Medieval buildings and market halls were razed to make way for an underground mall and train station while developers threw up contemporary apartment blocks for the young and affluent, as well as some social housing.
Currently 800,000 commuters daily pass through the station hub, while 41 million people shop in the crowded mall each year.
In 2001, no sooner elected, Mayor Bertrand Delanoe announced that as the ancient heart of Paris the increasingly shabby city center deserved a rethink.
Describing the area as "a soul-less architecturally bombastic concrete jungle," the Socialist mayor called for an end to problems such as traffic congestion, a lack of small shops and an increase in petty crime and appointed four teams of architects, two of them French and two of them Dutch, to draw up redevelopment projects.
Unveiled Wednesday, models of the projects will be shown to Parisians over the next month ahead of detailed debate before any decision is taken.
"This is such a symbol of the heart of Paris that we cannot afford to make a mistake," Delanoe said, while adding that the city nonetheless "will have to take risks."