suburban sprawl

[masterding]

Quote from VOA:
"When you think of the American suburbs, what comes to mind?
Street after street of similar houses? Shopping malls and big yards and white picket fences?
All valid images, but you're forgetting something that is - or was - a fixture of suburbia: young children, romping on quiet streets and in playgrounds.
According to 2010 Census data, the population of children has dropped in 95 percent of America's counties, compared with a decade earlier.
While the nation's population grew almost 10 percent in that time, the number of households with children under 18 remained constant, at about 38 million.
Five million more U.S. households have dogs than have children.
...
In some areas of the country, schools have closed from declining enrollments, some child-oriented businesses are closing, and housing needs are shifting, the magazine reported.
In Levittown, Pennsylvania, a planned community that became the stereotype of suburban sprawl, Jim White recalls that everybody on his street had kids. He told the USA Today newspaper, "At no time could you walk out and not have someone to play with.""
My questions:
1.Does it mean the numbers of households only have dogs(not have children) are five million more than that of households only have children(not have dogs)?
2.why are housing needs shifting ,just because the population of children has dropped ?
3.what are the meanings of "planned community " and "suburban sprawl"?
4.I think the sentence has the same meaning as " You could never walk out and not have someone to play with."
My question is there is no modal verb or Auxiliary verb before not, is it grammatically correct?
Thanks.

 

[TheParser]

***** NOT A TEACHER *****


SUBURBAN SPRAWL

(1) You already know what a suburb is. It might be helpful to remember that "sprawl" means something like "spread."

(2) I live in Los Angeles, an excellent example of "suburban sprawl."

(a) Before World War II (1939 - 1945), most people lived in an area that was legally the "city." People lived in neighborhoods of

that city, people worked in the city, and they often went downtown (the center of the city) for shopping or entertainment.

(b) Then after World War II, many people started leaving the city. Maybe they kept their city jobs, but they moved to remote

areas of the city or even outside the legal limits of the city. Why?

(i) The farther out you went, the cheaper the land was. You could build a bigger house for less money. After World War II,

many soldiers wanted to start families and have kids. (Also, there were other reasons why people started leaving the cities,

but I am not allowed to discuss certain sensitive matters here.)

(3) Today we say that the legal city of Los Angeles has about 4,000,000 people living within its borders. But about 6,000,000

people live in suburbs that surround L.A. Many drive two to three hours from their suburban homes to their jobs in Los Angeles

city (or vice versa).

(4) From what I have read, "suburban sprawl" has affected all of the big cities in the world. As people start moving to the cities

from the countryside (farms), they cannot afford to live in the city, so they have to find living quarters in areas near the city.

That means driving (or taking public transportation) for hours to get to work and then to get back home at night. I am sure

that you seen pictures of the famous "freeways" of Los Angeles. They started building them after World War II in order to make

travel time faster between the city and the suburbs.

 

[SoothingDave]

1.Does it mean the numbers of households only have dogs(not have children) are five million more than that of households only have children(not have dogs)?
2.why are housing needs shifting ,just because the population of children has dropped ?
3.what are the meanings of "planned community " and "suburban sprawl"?
4.I think the sentence has the same meaning as " You could never walk out and not have someone to play with."​

1. Yes.
2. Smaller families should mean people need smaller houses or apartments.
3. Parser covered "sprawl" well. A "planned community" is just that. Where empty land is and no town exists, an entire town or village is laid out and built. Instead of people building houses or other buildings according to their own desires, the entire community is built according to a master plan.
4. Yes.

 

[masterding]

4.If any modal verb or Auxiliary verb is needed,should it be "could" or "did"?