For some it is an inspirational idea to make Paris more green, to others a plan to destroy one of the French capital's most prestigious and historic avenues.

The fact that the proposals also include building council housing in the Billionaires' Row of Paris only makes them more contentious.

As Anne Hidalgo, the frontrunner in the city's mayoral race, walked the Avenue Foch, at the Arc de Triomphe end of the Champs Elysées, on Thursday, followed by banner-waving opponents, she insisted the plan to transform the area was "magnifique".

What's more, she said several times, her intuition told her she was on the right path.

Angry residents disagreed and said the scheme was crazy and politically motivated. "We say non to Madame Hidalgo's Luna Park," they said, and even Hidalgo's entourage had to admit the nickname was inspired.

Hidalgo, currently deputy mayor of Paris and the pollsters' favourite to win the municipal election in March, caused a storm when she announced she wanted to transform Avenue Foch, which some critics have described as a "lifeless urban motorway", into a "green corridor" leading straight to the neighbouring Bois de Boulogne public park.

Residents, who include a number Russian oligarchs, Middle Eastern royals and relatives of African leaders, are considerably less enthusiastic and have accused Hidalgo and the Socialist-run city hall of attempting to alter the socioeconomic makeup of the 16th arrondissement – the third-wealthiest area in Paris – and fill it with leftwing supporters.

Hidalgo's main opponent in the mayoral race, Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, of the centre-right UMP, immediately announced she was vehemently opposed to the proposal and would campaign against it.

The 1.3km (0.8-mile) long and 140-metre wide Avenue Foch, a classified historic monument, is one of 12 highways emanating from the roundabout around the Arc de Triomphe. It was opened in 1875 as the Avenue de l'Impératrice, named for Napoléon III's wife. During the Nazi occupation of Paris it was home to the local Gestapo headquarters and was nicknamed Avenue Boche.

If the plans are approved, and Hidalgo has promised a full Paris-wide consultation process, one end of Avenue Foch would become parkland and the other, by the Arc de Triomphe, a pedestrian area and shopping mall. Cars would be pushed out from the centre of the avenue to two lanes either side, and up to 7,000 homes, including student flats, local authority homes and private housing, would be built on a parallel strip.

"Historically, the spirit of Baron Haussmann was that this avenue should be Paris's entrance to the Bois de Boulogne," Hidalgo said on Thursday. "So this is about respecting history."

However, Jean-Pascal Sudaka, representing a group of residents who greeted the mayoral candidate with a banner and leaflets, said: "The project has no credibility or logic. Because they [the Socialists] are not in the majority in this arrondissement, they don't like it and are trying to change the makeup of the area. That's the real aim."

The 16th arrondissement of Paris has only around 2.5% of its properties designated as council housing, far short of the 20% required by law.