How best to rearrange the order of the address fields on the New individual/contact from?
I would recommend you create a little jQuery to move the fields around (something like you see here: template jQuery example)

And then place the created template with jQuery on the appropriate form (which will probably be CRM_Contact_Form_Edit_Address) using the alterContent hook (something like what you see here: alterContext hook example

Although this is not exactly what you want, it shows the approach. Does that help or is the confusion only growing?