1. the town will automatically be populated with randomly generated households when your sim starts interacting with it more. there should also be some premade townies there (the Goths, the Pancakes, etc) unless you've deleted them
2. there is a setting that allows you to chose whether ageing is on or off for played households. if you have multiple played households, there's an option to only have ageing on for the household you are currently playing with, or leave it on for all of them at all times
3. you can definitely build your own community lots! i do it all the time-- i have almost premade community lots in my worlds. (tip: if you want to use the same building twice, save it to your library while in build mode so you can place it again any time)
4. restaurants do come with dine out, you will indeed need the pack if you want them
5. there are some sims (the premades i mentioned before) that live in the houses that you can meet on the streets, and others that are randomly generated for those houses (which should start popping up once your sim interacts with the neighbourhood more). there are also "homeless" sims, which are the randomly generated sims that don't live in any residential lots but still show up around in the worlds. you can find all the sims in the save in the manage households tab. you can move them into houses if you like or leave them homeless
6. this one i can't answer, since i don't have get to work. sorry about that. i'll have to let someone else answer it
hope this helps!
