By Steve Schifferes BBC News Online in Washington

The main axis stretches into the heart of Beijing

Plans for the huge Olympic village to be built in Beijing for the 2008 Olympics have been unveiled by American architects.

The huge new Olympic Green will transform an area of north Beijing that is double the size of New York's Central Park or Paris's Versailles Palace.

The design, created by Boston architectural firm Sasaki Associates, is one of several being considered by the Chinese authorities.

The site will include an 80,000 seat stadium, venues for basketball and swimming, a big conference centre and a lake in the shape of a dragon.

But the most dramatic feature is a large park, landscaped with hills and waterfalls, that leads down a huge central avenue pointing to the Forbidden City in the centre of Beijing.

Mixed use

Dennis Peiprz, one of the chief designers, told this website that they wanted to ensure that the site could be put to effective use after the Olympics were over.

Sydney's Olympic village, built for the 2000 Games, was proving something of a white elephant, he said.

A man-made river lake around the main stadium

He also explained that the design was planned to incorporate the stages of Chinese civilisation, starting in the forest park, with squares every 1,000m marking a new era in Chinese thought and development.

The site would be linked by a monorail and new mass transport links that would be built by the city authorities.

And there would be new museums, hotels and mixed residential development on the edge of the site.

Funding issues

The design team says their plans have been accepted by the Beijing Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (BOCOG) and approved by Beijing's city planners as the official design for the site.

But the designers are waiting for the Olympic Committee which is trying to arrange the construction of the various stadiums and other venues by private sector firms.

The Chinese authorities are hoping that the private sector will pay for 75% of the cost of the construction - and they are offering each firm a bundled project which would include some more commercially viable office and hotel development.

Once the firms have been selected, and the new stadiums designed, the construction of Beijing's biggest urban regeneration project will begin in earnest.