I'm working on making my town as good a possible and I know the ten villagers that I want to have in my town. However, there are some spaces for house that are simply undesirable as they would either be in the way of paths or be too close to the river. My question is if the villager reset glitch from New Leaf can be used here to manipulate where a villager will place his/her house. Thanks in advance!

I don't think so. The villagers will only move in where those little signposts are placed.

Yeah I know about the signposts (of which there are far too many considering the ten villager limit) but I'm not sure if this trick would allow me to influence which signpost a villager place his/her house on.

After playing CF for years I figured out that depending on the villager, it is my opinion that they are given set plots where they move into depending on the character. For an example, Octavian always moves into a specific plot and never moves in anywhere else.

That's very interesting. I used to have Anchovy and Bunnie in my town and I want them back so would they move into the same plots that they were living on before they moved out?

I've only had one previous villager move back into town, but I can't remember where they had lived before, so I can't confirm that. I do hope your favorites move back in for you though.