Here's an interesting picture from the website I didn't notice before that shows some house styles, how closely they can be placed to one another, and how closely the paths can connect to the front of them.
Previewers commented how they couldn't put houses as close to one another as they expected, so even though it seems you could snug your house right up next to a river on the sides or back, the game does require one square of space between houses, probably to account for no clipping in some styles of house that might jut out some from their territory. Of course the front side of a house can't be right up against anything, because there needs to be room for the mailbox and for entry / exit.
Still, I'm impressed with the seeming lack of limit of how closely you can place things right next to the house, with those exceptions above. Especially glad you can connect your paths right up to your doorway, as I expected a little annoying space you couldn't do anything with there instead. I'm curious as to whether you could completely path around your house to make a little patio foundation, perhaps if you made it in advance and then moved your house to the spot it already existed at? The big bummer I've seen people talking about so far with the Pathing Tool is that different patterns of paths you load into it seem to refuse to connect to each other naturally, but that's just going from things observed so far, so we don't know for sure that there's no way to make them fit snugly with one another. It could very well just be some option you select when you're designing your path pattern or load it into the tool. Though I know in New Leaf people often combined floor patterns, taking advantage of how they fit into one another, including the ones I used in my own town, so it would be a bummer if that's no longer possible. Another thing worth mentioning about paths and patterns in general while we're on the topic is that New Horizons has finally added the option for transparency in your designs! That means no longer do people need to tweak path patterns accounting for every season and change of the grass / snow if they want things like rocky paths that blend in with the natural ground. So that's huge. I am curious how they'll handle transparency for clothing sake though...
