There followed 17 years of dithering, which turned a prime site in the heart of Paris into a wasteland and then a gaping chasm – “le trou des Halles”. President Georges Pompidou, a determined modernist, wanted to build a clutch of skyscrapers as a new business centre for the city. But nothing much happened.When Pompidou died, in 1974, the new President, Val? Giscard d’Estaing, scrapped the plan and promised – Ozymandias-like – “a monumental architectural gesture” which would be a reminder of his presidency. But nothing much happened.Three years later, an ambitious, youngish, politician became mayor of Paris and scrapped Giscard’s non-plan, largely because he detested Giscard. The new mayor, one Jacques Chirac, declared: “From now on the architect-in-chief is me.” But nothing much happened.Finally, in 1986, the hole was plugged with an uninspiring series of gardens, dotted with ventilation shafts for the shopping centre and labyrinthine Metro junction below. Eighteen years later, Les Halles resembles a kind of shabby Tellytubby-land, shunned by Parisians and tourists and colonised by young men in hooded anoraks.

The Centre Georges Pompidou, 200 metres away, remains a great success; Les Halles is a waste of space.The saga is not finished, however. The present mayor of Paris, the great and good Bertrand Delanoe, has decided to rip everything up – including part of the shopping centre and the Ch?let-Les Halles Metro and RER junction, the busiest underground station in Europe – and start again.”We must invent a heart which is worthy of the city,” Delanoe says. “Les Halles must become the symbol of the dynamism of Paris,” he believes. “Somewhere that will be visited by tourists in its own right, like the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Louvre, and the Eiffel Tower.”Delanoe has chosen four, competing, plans Residents of the area are being asked their opinions. A committee of city councillors will make the final decision in June.All the plans look wonderful Architects’ plans always do.

My favourite is the project put forward by a team led by the French architect, Jean Nouvel, which includes a vast “hanging garden” – a piece of open countryside suspended over a rebuilt shopping centre, with startling views over the Parisian rooftoops to Notre Dame and the Eiffel Tower.The Dutch architect, Rem Koolhaas (what a great name for an architect), has suggested opening out the road tunnel which bisects the site and turning it into a kind of glass canyon of shops. Instead of being buried under the park above, the shopping centre, undergound station, and swimming pool would be suffused with light admitted through a forest of colourful, four-sided, glass towers poking above the surface.Whichever plan is chosen, residents of the area fear a re-run of a horror movie they remember from the 1970s: the Trou des Halles II, or The Return of the Chasm.Not this time, insists Delanoe Everything will be done little by little. The shopping centre and railway station will stay open at all times. The main outlines, he insists, must be finished by 2007, and the whole project completed by 2012, when Paris hopes to host the Olympic games.