Pyrene was incorporated as pendant unit to side-chain urethane methacrylate polymers having a short ethyleneoxy or a long polyethyleneoxy spacer segment. The short-spacer pyrene urethane methacrylate was also incorporated either as block or random copolymer (1:9) along with polystyrene. The excimer emission was observed to be different for different polymers with the random copolymer exhibiting the lowest efficiency. But, the total quantum yield was highest (phi = 0.58) for random copolymer due to the high emission coefficient of monomer compared to that of excimer. The polymer dynamics were compared by steady state emission and fluorescence decay in THF or THF/water (9:1) solvent mixture and films. The solid state decay profile showed decay without a rise time indicating presence of ground state aggregates. In THF/water (9:1), the decay profile at the excimer emission (500 nm) showed a rise time indicating dynamic excimers. The evolution of excimeric emission centred similar to 430 or similar to 480 nm as a function of temperature was also studied in THF/water (9:1). The I(E)/I(M) ratio for the lambda(343) nm excitation exhibited steady increase with temperature with the block copolymer PS-b-PIHP exhibiting the highest ratio and highest rate of increase; whereas, the random copolymer PS-r-PIHP had the lowest I(E)/I(M) ratios. (C) 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part A: Polym Chem 49: 1678-1690, 2011