New luxury 4x4 parking garage

For those not familiar with France, many houses tend to have a basement which is where you park the car and store your junk It's less common here in Brittany where the ground tends to be made from granite, which makes digging a tad on the hard side, though even so a partial;y subterranean basement and elevated ground floor is still common. For blocks of flats a subterranean parking garage is the norm theses days as there isn't anywhere to park your 4x4 otherwise.

On my way to the hippodrome for my dog walks, I pass an area where two blocks of flats are being demolished to be replaced by two new blocks of flats for social housing and several nice small private houses for locals have been demolished to construct two large (ugly) private flat blocks as second homes for Parisians.

This hole will be where the Parisians will be parking their 4x4s when they arrive from Paris for the weekend. The spot where the houses stood was on old stone outcrops, and all around this area was basically below sea leave before the sea dykes were built and the land drained. For the past two weeks they've been using very expensive machines to first shatter the granite blocks, and then big machine mounted hammer action chisels to slice the rocks up into smaller pieces, then a big backhoe loader has dug out the pieces which have been carted off site.

As you can see they have dug down through the granite and found the water table at the bottom, it's probably salty too as the spot I took the picture from was below sea level, and the whole is sever metres deep... Historically area this would have been the southern edge of the salt marsh and at high tide submerged in water...

It's going to require lots of waterproof concrete to keep the water out - it's been dry here for weeks, so this water isn't rain water, it's most definitely ground water, and it will need to resist salt attack which will make it more expensive, just so rich Parisians can park their 4x4s off street when they visit.

I'm not bitter or cynical, but I do feel for people who actually live here all year round and can't afford a home because all the land has been bought for stupid luxury flats for weekenders.. And that's before we consider the environmental impact of all the construction machinery, concrete, giant 4x4s for a block of flats that will be empty most of the year...