Thinking about doing a big project on my island

[Timexturner]

So what I’m thinking about is demolishing all the inclines And bridges, moving all the houses and leveling out my town and doing a huge reconstruction project, I know it’ll probably take a lot of time, but I just want to know where to start. Because right now I have all of my shops lined up like in new leaf and I liked how that looked. I dunno if I should move the shops or just the houses. It’ll cost less, but I dunno, I look at others towns and they have their shops all spread out, I like that idea. Maybe I’ll make little islands for all the shops.... I dunno. Any ideas on where to start?

here’s my town map if any are interested:

 

[Pyoopi]

When you say leveling out, like also removing your rivers, or nah?
It might help if you post a pic of your map, so others can get a visual or understand something more concrete.

 

[pipty]

Always felt that leveling out everything instead of slowly chipping away the island could be a bit too overwhelming tho

 

[Timexturner]

Updated with map if anybody whose good at stuff like this wants to help come up with something

 

[Mairmalade]

I can’t tell from the map overview but the little shopping area has a lot of character i’m sure.

I just finished doing this a couple days ago. I cut down all my trees and moved all my buildings (including most villager houses) to the beach. Moved furniture and flowers to storage.

It does take a lot of time and bells; however, your layout has one strip of raised cliffs and a river that looks fairly easy to remove.

I’d start with a plan for the bottom right because you only have paths there now and wouldn’t have to spend any bells demolishing.

If you only like the idea of shops being spread out, you can probably do that without a huge construction project. Landscape a current area a bit differently to accommodate for one of the shops (maybe somewhere on the bottom-left or bottom-right). Could try to squeeze it in the villager area to make a mini farmer’s market or ‘community center’ type look.

 

[Mayor-of-Bliss]

I would move shops first.