Like this article? Chip in to keep stories like these coming.

Everyone who lives in a big city knows that renting space -- an apartment, a storefront, or even a table at a street festival -- is expensive.

What’s not so obvious is that the city and public institutions routinely give away the use of lots of valuable land for free. The beneficiaries of this space generally take their good fortune for granted while the community and its cash-strapped institutions lose out on a huge untapped source of revenue.

 The world's population is shifting to cities, and that means services traditionally provided by local governments are growing in scale and importance. From public transit and recreation facilities, to drinking water treatment, sewage infrastructure and policing and fire services, local government services are at the centre of our daily lives, our health and economic prosperity.

These services are provided for less than the typical cost of basic telephone and Internet and they are provided by the level of government that has by far the smallest share of tax revenue. (The Federation of Canadian Municipalities tags the local government portion at only eights cents out of every tax dollar.)

If there is anything people pay less attention to than provincial or federal politics, it might be municipal politics. Low voter turnout at election time and limited media coverage, along with what seems to be only occasional engagement, seems to indicate that this is the case. After all, a devil's advocate might say, people have a lot more interest in health care debates or education than parking ordinances and zoning bylaws.

But if, for whatever reason, you think that local politics don't matter, think again. There are a number of reasons that we should not ignore municipal politics.