It has to be the spot closest to the exit.

It very much depends.

In a densely populous city, you can't fit that many spaces along a street. Price can be a factor too, since street parking will (in many cases) cost drastically less than a parking deck or lot.

This is in stark contrast with a suburban area that hinges on more rural, where you might see hundreds of empty spaces at any random time outside of a series of retail spaces, like a Lowes + Target + Old Navy + Shoprite or whatever. At some points (say Sunday morning grocery shopping), that Shoprite lot will be full, and so would the neighboring sections in front of the other stores, even though they are all going to Shoprite for groceries. Then you'll see people waste time going up and down lanes trying to find a spot thats a whole 20ft closer to the store, because who knows why, rather than park in the next lane over which is in front of another store.

That said, what happened here IMO has way less to do with cars and a lot more to do with the problems of this capitalist society, with wedges driving communities apart, pervasive pathological narcissism, a complete disregard for human life, etc., that has been pushed for so long.

Fortunately some cities are removing street parking to install safer bike lanes and/or decrease car infrastructure.

Probably more to it than just a parking spot (assuming the socioeconomic issues in Baltimore haven't changed much since the 90s and were accurately represented in the tv show "The Wire" 😅)...