It seems that when the population of any big city reaches a certain tipping point, space becomes its scarcest commodity. In overcrowded Shanghai (population 25 million), this is a dire reality. Living space, green spaces, walking space - and now parking spaces - are all in tragically short supply.

Residents of Jinxie Community in Xuhui district recently fired the first salvo of what is now being called "Shanghai's parking wars" after car owners there started leaving furniture such as old sofas to occupy their parking spaces while away. On sunny days, some senior citizens - the elderly parents of those car owners - bring out folding chairs, a thermos of tea and their knitting to occupy the valuable parking spaces all day long.

In one particularly brutal battle of the parking war, nearly 60 car-owning households in Jinxie purchased steel anti-parking locks that were bolted into the cement. The illegal locks were eventually torn out by the police.

According to Xinmin Evening News, there are over 1,000 households in Jinxie Community, among which 200 own cars. However, as an older compound built in the 1980s, back when bicycles were the most common mode of transportation, there is no underground parking garage and property management painted only 100 parking spaces. Disputes and even fierce arguments have become commonplace at this now-notorious compound.

However, the situation at newer residential compounds across Shanghai is reportedly not any better. By 2014 there were 1.79 million parking spaces in or around Shanghai's residential communities, however 2.9 million spaces were needed at night, when the city's 3 million registered car owners return home from work. That's a 38 percent deficit.

In Shanghai's city center, which has the most densely concentrated clusters of residential compounds, only 640,000 parking spaces are available for 1.33 million car owners who live in the area. That's a 52 percent deficit. In English vernacular, one would call that "FUBAR!"

Taking my own neighborhood as an example of the dog-eat-dog mayhem that drivers such as myself have to deal with here, even though our compound was built in 2001, it only offers 240 parking spaces, above and below ground, for approximately 900 households. The more-valuable underground spots are currently selling for 300,000 yuan ($45,614). Even though you legally get to keep the spot for 70 years (the maximum number of years one can own any real estate in China), it's an obscene amount of money for just 6 square meters of cement.

Further compounding the problem are those greedy property management companies who allow non-residents to park their cars in compounds with limited space. This is exactly why I don' t drive to work; I use public transportation just so that I can keep my precious parking space all week. If I drive somewhere on the weekend, I specifically time my day so that I can get back home before other drivers do.

This is happening everywhere in Shanghai. The 40 parking spaces at a 120-household residential compound named Lizhi in Jing'an district are selling for up to 550,000 yuan each. Over at a new 1,700-household community in Xuhui district ostentatiously named East Manhattan, its 500 parking spaces cost 1 million yuan each. Even just to rent a space there will set back a driver around 2,500 yuan per month.

Over the past three years, the number of registered cars in Shanghai increased by 200,000 year-on-year. Even though nobody here really needs a car - our public transportation network is vast, efficient and inexpensive - everyone wants a car because it's the fashionable thing to own. Without a vehicle, you are just another plebeian. Driving is a high status that Shanghainese take seriously, so much so that car owners are willing to sit (and be seen) in traffic for hours upon hours after work even though they could have already been home had they just taken the metro.

It's happening all across China, too. Just recently the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers announced a 7.3 percent nationwide growth in its auto market last year, with 21 million passenger cars sold in 2015 alone. This is actually considered an industry slowdown, but you would never know it living in a city like Shanghai, which has been ranked as having some of the world's worst gridlock.

To spur the slowing economy, China's central and municipal governments are actually encouraging more car consumption by decreasing its automobile tax even though the roads in our massive metropolises are tragically congested.

To combat the rapid increase in air pollution resulting from all these cars, Shanghai citizens are now being incentivized by the government to purchase new-energy vehicles by being given free Shanghai license plates, which otherwise cost a ridiculous 80,600 yuan. Really, they should be given free parking.

The opinions expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Global Times.