Bhubaneswar, April 24: The city is set to have smart parks with facilities such as Wi-Fi, toilets and water ATMs.

To begin with, Bhubaneswar Smart City Limited (BSCL) and the Bhubaneswar Development Authority have decided to develop three parks - all at Saheed Nagar - in the first phase. Later, based on the demand and popularity, more parks would be developed in other areas. The parks will have child-friendly infrastructure and landscaping.

"The parks will be universally inclusive and promoted as learning and recreational centres with features such as children's play area, toilets, splash parks, open gyms, watchtowers, butterfly parks, sensory gardens and basketball courts," said BSCL managing director Krishan Kumar.

The three parks to be developed at Saheed Nagar will be close to the proposed park district near the BMC-Bhawani Mall. The three chosen parks are BDA-OMC Park, Robot Park and a community garden near the Sparsh Hospital.

While the splash park would be a recreation area for water play that has little or no stagnant water, the butterfly park would be a facility with special emphasis on conserving and showcasing butterflies in their natural habitat. The sensory garden would be designed with the purpose of stimulating the senses though plants and other materials to engage the visitors' senses of sight, smell, touch, taste and sound.

Local councillor Saswati Mishra said one of the important agenda of the smart city proposal was to make the city children-friendly. "The parks within the Bhubaneswar Town Centre District will have children-friendly smart facilities. Architects will plan activities in the parks to keep the kids engaged," she said.

Mishra said work on transforming the parks into smart ones had been initiated with the Robot Park. "I believe that the residents, especially the children, will highly benefit once the project is complete," said the councillor.

The BSCL will spend Rs 1.8 crore on the project and has fixed October as the deadline for its completion.

"The city administration is going on promising one project after another to convert Bhubaneswar into a smart city. We are going to have smart roads, smart parking, smart market and what not! Now, we are going to have smart parks, but I haven't seen even a stone turning from its place in the city in the past one year," said Ganesh Rout, who runs a shop at Saheed Nagar.

The authorities are also planning to have open gyms in the smart parks with equipment such as air walker, sit-up bench, air swing, twister, set back or glider, push and pull-up chair, knee or hip raise on parallel bars, big shoulder wheel, spinner, bench with fixed dumbbell, bench with fixed weight lift and poles with fixed weights.

The parks would have watchtowers for visitors to admire the surrounding areas from a vantage point.

Another important feature of the parks would be electronic signage to give visitors information on special events. It would provide real-time information on special events in the neighbourhood, as well as information on pollution levels, traffic and weather.