PARIS, Dec 15 (AFP) - In a major make-over for Paris' city centre, a garden promenade partially covered by a vast glass-and-copper roof was chosen Wednesday for the historic Les Halles site, whose once-lauded 1970s redevelopment is now seen as a prime example of urban blight.

After months of deliberation, Paris city hall awarded the task of reworking the site to 55-year-old French architect David Mangin whose vision of a leafy walkway integrating Les Halles with the surrounding cityscape was the simplest and cheapest of four proposals on offer.

The scene for 800 years of Paris's meat and vegetable market, Les Halles was gutted in the early 1970s to incorporate Europe's largest city-centre shopping mall and an underground rail hub that that now disgorges hundreds of thousands of commuters every morning.

However what was once regarded as a daring piece of modern planning is today associated with many of the worst aspects of city life: dilapidated buildings, gangs of bored youth and crime.

"Les Halles has become a place that Parisians avoid. But it should be a place that people want to go to. It should become a major public space - just like the Louvre or the Tuileries gardens," Mangin said in an interview before the selection.

Paris mayor Bertrand Delanoe, a socialist, opened a competition for tenders a year ago, and models of the rival projects have been on display at the Hotel de Ville and on the Internet since June. Mangin's main rival was a Dutch bid to construct an array of multi-coloured towers.

Under the winning design the existing garden at the western end of the site - little-frequented now because of its palpable sense of insecurity - will be re-laid with lawns and trees, and a central promenade will extend from the domed Bourse de Commerce which will be converted for cultural displays.

At the other end - where the underground shopping centre "Forum des Halles" now descends - the promenade will continue under a two-hectare (five-acre) transparent roof set nine metres (30 feet) above the ground.

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