For every Edinburgh architectural proposal that gets the green light, you can bet there are at least twice as many that end up scrapped.
From a motorway encircling the city centre and a lido in Princes Street Gardens, to an opera house facing the castle and a film theatre dedicated to Sean Connery, the capital has seen scores of grand plans fall by the wayside over the years.
We take a look at seven ambitious Edinburgh proposals that made it to the drawing board and remained there.
READ MORE: The abandoned Edinburgh opera house plan that left an embarrassing 'hole in the ground'
Opera House
In the 1960s, a plan was put forward to construct an opera house that would put Edinburgh on a cultural par with the great cities of the world.
Resembling something out of the Jetsons, the futuristic-looking opera house would have been sited at Castle Terrace, directly facing Edinburgh Castle.
Space was available to construct a 1,600-seater auditorium above a smaller 800-seat theatre, while there would also be a 120-bed hotel, operated by brewers Scottish and Newcastle. Existing buildings along Castle Terrace were even cleared to make way for the new development.
Early cost projections were £4 million, however, this would soon spiral to more than £12 million and the plans were shelved indefinitely.
The embarrassing "hole in the ground" caused by the failure to deliver the opera house, would take until 1991 to be filled, when the Saltire Court office building was constructed.
Princes Street Gardens Lido
In February 1939, the city council discussed the feasibility of creating a 20th century version of the Nor' Loch by building an outdoor pool in West Princes Street Gardens.
If given the go-ahead, the huge bathing facility would have taken up a sizeable chunk of the gardens with "appropriate dressing rooms" built underneath Princes Street.
Ultimately, however, the proposal would fail to make a splash among city councillors, who voted against it by 13 votes to six. The outbreak of war later that year killed the idea completely.
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Sean Connery Filmhouse
Few abandoned plans have had chins wagging more than the 2004 effort to create an Edinburgh film theatre dedicated to the city's most famous son, Sean Connery.
Backed by Sir Sean himself, a design was produced by Richard Murphy Architects, who promised the delivery of an "iconic" new building opposite the Usher Hall on Lothian Road that would serve as a hub for the Scottish film industry.
Had this one gone ahead we'd have had a four-storey rotunda occupying much of Festival Square and blocking out the view of the Sheraton Hotel. Not the worst idea, maybe?
The Festival Square filmhouse proposal was revived in 2020 following the death of Sir Sean. However, this plan also appears to have vanished without trace.
The Edinburgh Motorway Plan
If there was a podium place for the most controversial Edinburgh development proposal of all-time, then this would be in with a fair shout of claiming the golden laurels.
Originally devised in 1949, the Abercrombie Plan envisaged an Edinburgh moulded to suit the motorcar, the ownership of which was rising rapidly.
The plan was for a six-lane inner ring road to encircle and split the Old and New Towns and level districts including Haymarket, Tollcross and Inverleith.
While some of the slum clearance proposals of the Abercrombie Plan were enacted, the nightmarish city centre motorway idea thankfully evaporated in the 1960s and was never revisited.
The Prince Albert Keep
In the wake of Prince Albert's death in 1861, discussions were had over how Scotland's capital should best pay its respects.
One suggestion was for a new 160ft-tall keep - the Albert Tower - to be constructed at Edinburgh Castle. It's said, however, that Queen Victoria did not approve of architect David Bryce's plans and the keep was kept on the drawing board.
Contemporary drawings show that the tower would have dramatically changed the look of Edinburgh's most iconic landmark.
BBC Broadcasting Centre
Back in the late 1970s signs appeared at Greenside promising the construction of a new BBC broadcasting centre
The purpose-built hub, which would replace the outdated facilities at Queen Street, looked a dead cert, but never managed to get off the ground.
The strip of wasteland at Greenside would remain vacant until the construction of the Omni Centre and surrounding offices in the early 2000s.
In the end, it would be Glasgow that got the new BBC telly centre, with Pacific Quay opening in 2007.
Portobello Pier
In 2015 architects at Smith Scott Mullan Associates unveiled plans to build a new pier at Portobello Promenade.
The space-age structure, which would have included a performance and live events space, as well as a cafe, meeting rooms and sports facilities, would have been the successor of the beach district's original 1871 pier which was demolished after being damaged in a storm.
