Many municipal street departments in Iowa have faced budget shortfalls due to revenue limitations in spite of increasing demands for service. These budget shortfalls do not allow them to adequately maintain an aging street system without careful planning. Thin maintenance surface (TMS) techniques have been developed to extend pavement life by mitigating existing distresses. TMS such as seal coat, slurry seal, micro-surfacing, and fog seal are cost effective preventive maintenance techniques that when properly used reduce pavement life cycle costs. Currently, many municipal street officials cannot expend the effort to test or improve existing preventive maintenance (PM) techniques. TMS are feasible PM techniques for cities to utilize however, further demonstration and evaluation in an urban context would be helpful. By performing these evaluations, researchers hope to encourage improved selection of maintenance techniques in urban settings. This research will show how TMS might be properly included in municipal street maintenance programs. The research will evaluate the use of TMS in urban settings by constructing three sets of test sections in three Iowa cities. The three types of surfaces that were used in this project were seal coats, chipmat, and micro-surfacing. Various binders and aggregates that are local to Iowa were used. Condition surveys were performed before and after the application of the test sections and will be performed after the first winter to evaluate the performance of the each new surface. Construction was observed and crews used typical construction techniques so that the results will be those that are achievable using current techniques. Conclusions drawn from this project include: 1) Pre-coated limestone chips outperformed other local aggregates, 2) a chipmat can be used to prevent reflective cracking, 3) emulsion can be used a tack coat for a chipmat, 4) limestone is a suitable aggregate for micro-surfacing, and 5) proper construction technique is one of the primary influences on the success of a TMS. These conclusions are based on a short-term analysis of the surface treatments applied during this research.