Last night, on a complete whim, I deleted the town I've been working on since New Leaf's launch and started blank    I don't really regret it because I have never been happy with my town but I DO regret forgetting to grab my DLC & store it in my husband's town...so I lost all of my goodies.

Other than that I have big plans for my new town!  I want to make it very natural & Japanese themed with lots of earth tone colors   I'm really excited to see how it goes.

Has anyone else completely started over recently?  

I have as well.
However, it was more so because I stopped playing for eight months. I know how to go back without losing any villagers...however I was a little careless and absent minded.
Not to mention before my hiatus...I did lose one of my favorites. I also never really liked my map in my original copy...but by the time I learned about all the ways to get what you want...I was too invested with my characters badges, museum, and villagers. This is actually my first day back here in a long time.

So I decided to take my third copy and restart it to convert it into my new main town. I previously only used it for storage, time traveling, and cycling. It took a bit of time to transfer all my things to the others. However, since Monday, I have found a good map and fruit. I also like my mayor's face more. I also started fresh with a new town name. I'm excited to have the layout I want.
I'll probably keep my original as the storage town until I get my new mayor's catalog complete.

Best of luck to you with your new town!

Awesome!  Starting over is definitely an experience, I wish I had thought ahead like you and transferred items over to my spare town but I was just way too impulsive lol I don't regret it though! & I was the same as you with being in too deep by the time I learned how everything worked that's why it's taken me this long to re-start.

I really love my new town.  I played naturally, day by day, for 2 years so this time I'm just going with a theme and not worrying about completion of things.  I'm going to make it a very natural forest / autumn / rural town feel.  I plan to keep it permanently set in Autumn just a fun town for dreamers to explore.  My last town was super bright and colorful (named Lollipop and candy themed) so this will be a really nice and relaxing change of pace.

Good luck with your town too!!!      

I've recently started again on my town. Not through choice, as my dog had actually gotten ahold of my cartridge and chewed it up back in 2013. I forgot about the whole game until HHD came out and I've brought it again!

In a way I'm glad to have restarted as I've put more thought into it now, especially when placing PWPs. Though I did prefer my villagers the first time around.

I have just restarted my ACNL town as well after a hiatus of over a year. I am really pleased I did and I am really enjoying AC again.

I also have recently restarted, I hadn't played my old world in over 8 months so I decided the best way to renew my interest was to restart. I'm so glad that I did.

I restarted my main town last week. I have two copies of the game, but they are on the same DS (an electronic copy & physical copy), so I couldn't move my items. I've restarted my electronic town multiple times, but I've always kept my main town. However, in the last few months I took a break from AC and when I went back to it I realized I'd done so much that really all there was to do was town maintenance. After a great deal of thought on it, I deleted my original town and honestly couldn't be more glad I did.

I feel it definitely renewed my interest in it. Maybe all us "restart-ers" could friend code each other and help each other out with items/tasks, etc. Most of the people I used to play with have been inactive for months and I figure it's a new town, so new friends would be nice.

My daughter took my game and DS to college with her.  I bought a used copy of New Leaf when I got HHD and started a new town on that one.  I started it on 1/1/12 and am doing 2 to 3 game days every day for now.