The Center Ville area of the capital, the commercial and administrative heart of the Caribbean nation, was one of the worst hit by the catastrophic January 12 quake, which turned many of its shops and landmark buildings to rubble.

Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive said Haiti had sought help from the charity foundation of the 61-year-old heir to the British throne, who has stirred controversy with his criticism of modern architecture, to draw up a master plan for the harmonious reconstruction of downtown Port-au-Prince.

"The contact has already been made, there is an informal agreement, we have to formalize all that," Bellerive told Reuters this week.

He said Haiti was seeking a "coherent" rebuilding plan from The Prince's Foundation for the Built Environment, which would work on the project with urban planners Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company, based in Miami, Washington and Charlotte, N.C.

"They have the experience," he said. The Port-au-Prince city center makeover is part of a national recovery strategy that seeks to "decompress" Haiti's hilly capital, which even before the quake was a chaotic, overcrowded warren of streets clogged with vendors, vehicles and pedestrians.

"I hope that we're going to see Port-au-Prince as a huge construction field," Haitian central bank governor Charles Castel said, adding that funds freed up by an International Monetary Fund (IMF) cancellation of $268 million of debt would help in the reconstruction of the city's administrative heart.

An army of resilient street hawkers quickly returned to the traditionally bustling Port-au-Prince downtown area after the quake, which killed up to 300,000 people and devastated the economy of what was already the poorest state in the Americas.

They have laid out their wares again - everything from fruit, food and vehicle and electrical spare parts to voodoo paraphernalia - alongside or on top of mounds of crumbled debris which narrow the streets for vehicles and pedestrians.

But much still lies in ruins, and key buildings like the Haitian parliament, the Justice Palace and the 19th Century Iron Market were either destroyed or damaged.