I'm not sure I'd want to see Moodle go right down to that level of granularity such as where to put a single button like the edit button Chris (might be a bit too small - I'd personally like to keep some consistency such as the edit button being part of the breadcumb row, the logo being part of the header, etc - on the other hand, to put it inline with breadcrumb, or in line with main menu, or... so yeah, maybe ), but in terms of being able to put blocks and content where we want it, I think that's a case of finding a way to simplify the use of block regions (like Adaptable has done) or extending the use of those regions and making them more central to the flexibility of the layout (as flexibase has done). Two different approaches with the same usability goal in mind - great to see if both approaches can develop into one much improved user interface, perhaps
What would be great is to see the front page broken up so that the different bits that become 'main content' right now are taken as separate content and make everything dragable into whatever region you want it to be in. Right now for example, flexibase has many custom block regions all around the main content area, and that allows the main content to be just about anywhere in a 5x5 grid of block regions (including the main content), but still the frontpage will put the course list in the same place as the news forum as the frontpage content section. It would be good (I think) to see each of those as a separate 'block' that could be positioned in any block region - and also to allow any block to be dragged into what is currently the main content area.