In the 1940s a controversial plan was published which envisaged the construction of an inner city motorway, the rebuilding of Princes Street and the complete demolition of the capital's 'slum' districts.
Published on January 1, 1949, the Civic Survey and Plan for the City and Royal Burgh of Edinburgh was the brainchild of planning experts Patrick Abercrombie and Derek Plumstead, who had been enlisted to help shape the capital in the years after the end of the Second World War.
Dubbed the 'Abercrombie Plan', the plan was essentially a guide to future development in Edinburgh in the form of a big book packed with survey information and lots of radical ideas and solutions for change.
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A preamble for the plan stated: "A Plan for Edinburgh must needs be a hazardous undertaking: there can be few cities towards which the inhabitants display a fiercer loyalty or deeper affection. Even its blemishes are venerated.
"The planner who dares to propose improvements must go warily."
Despite this claim of "wariness", however, the Abercrombie was anything but.
The plan included proposals for the complete clearance of Leith to create an industrial zone; a freight railway under the Meadows; the creation of new communities in areas such as Wester Hailes and the rebuilding of Princes Street, under which a second road would be built as part of a new road and rail system.
Further ambitious road proposals included a Bridges Bypass, a dual carriageway sweeping around the eastern part of the city centre with tunnels through the Old Town and under Calton Hill, and a Milton Road Bypass with a new road carved through Holyrood Park.
In order to free up more space in the city centre, several key government and cultural institutions were pipped for relocation, including the Botanics and the Scottish National Gallery.
The plan even anticipated the need for a City Bypass – the suggested route broadly following the line of the road that opened forty years later.
Among the more thorny suggestions was the inner ring road, which, while promising to ease traffic congestion and allow for the development of new housing and commercial districts, would have obliterated countless historic buildings in the city centre.
Restoring uniformity to Princes Street by demolishing all of the famous thoroughfares existing buildings, was another controversial matter.
This would eventually be taken up in the 1950s by the Princes Street Panel group, who supported the idea and concocted a plan to rebuild the street from end-to-end with first floor balconies that would eventually form a continuous elevated walkway.
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While never completed, the Princes Street plan was started in the 1960s, with a number of prominent Victorian buildings, including the Life Association headquarters and original New Club razed to the ground.
In the end, Edinburgh was spared from the more radical elements of the Abercrombie scheme.
In contrast with the English cities where Abercrombie had previously worked, Edinburgh had suffered very little war damage. This was a critical difference when it came to the public’s response to his proposals, and the proposals were widely criticised. One newspaper correspondent described the Abercrombie Plan as a "sacrilegious outrage".
Although most of the scheme was ultimately abandoned, Edinburgh did implement certain elements. Areas such as Leith and the Southside witnessed wholesale demolition as families were moved out of dilapidated tenements and relocated to new housing schemes on the fringes of the city.
Princes Street still bears the scars of the attempts of the 1960s to "restore uniformity", while at Tollcross in the 1970s, Earl Grey Street was significantly widened. The roadway had been considered a key component of the inner ring road plan.
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