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Public participation in governance is regarded as a key element in enhancing urban sustainability. While there is a wealth of participation efforts in Indian cities, there are inadequate processes for regular, inclusive, egalitarian, informed and well-structured democratic participation that provide a real say to citizens in public decision-making. 'Deliberative democracy' has emerged as one way to improve effective public participation in decision-making, though it is mostly prevalent in developed countries. An action research initiative was implemented over several years in Pune, India. It used mixed methods to introduce and assess the applicability to the Indian urban context of high-quality public deliberations. This article presents a case study of a deliberative democracy initiative, framing the transformative public involvement needed to address sustainability problems. It also shows how the integration of the mixed methods approach in the action research to design and facilitate deliberative participation processes, helped to broaden and deepen understanding, and enhanced the transformative capacity of the research design.