In recent years, there has been increasing focus on the question of how to balance work and life commitments in both academic and political debates. Homeworking is one initiative that has been promoted as a way of improving the work–life balance. This paper examines the experience of homeworking drawing on a recently completed ESRC study on homeworkers. Using the data from 45 interviews and 3 focus groups with homeworkers from different socio-economic backgrounds, it explores the question of whether working (or not) from home improves people's capacity to balance their work and life commitments.

This paper proposes a new way of conceptualising urban 'digital divides'. It focuses on the ways in which information and communication technologies (ICTs) unevenly affect the pace of life within the urban environment. Based on a detailed case study of how ICTs are being used in an affluent and a marginalised neighbourhood in Newcastle upon Tyne, the paper suggests that urban digital divides need to be understood as more than uneven patterns of access. They emerge in this work as more than the presence or absence of specific technological artefacts. Rather, it is argued that different styles and speeds of technologically mediated life now work to define urban socio-spatial inequalities. The paper distinguishes between two such key styles and speeds. First, the paper argues that affluent and professional groups now use new media technologies pervasively and continuously as the 'background' infrastructure to sustain privileged and intensely distanciated, but time-stressed, lifestyles. Secondly, more marginalised neighbourhoods tend to be characterised by instrumental and episodic ICT usage patterns which are often collectively organised through strong neighbourhood ties. For the former, mediated networks help to orchestrate neighbourhood ties; for the latter, it is those neighbourhood ties that enable on-line access.

Much theoretical commentary over the last decade addressed the likely impacts of information and communication technologies (ICTs) on urban life works by opposing ‘virtual’ spaces and mediated activities to ‘real’ places. Drawing on recent theorising in media studies about ‘remediation’, this paper attempts to move beyond a reliance on such unhelpful real–virtual conceptual binaries. The paper uses such conceptual discussions to consider more fully the multiple, subtle, and interdependent spatiotemporalities which together work to constitute ICT-based urban change. While innovative work has traced the emergence of various online spaces and communities, our interest here is on the intersection of online and offline practices. Through a case study of two contrasting neighbourhoods in Newcastle upon Tyne, the paper explores in detail how social relations and grocery shopping are being affected by ICT use. It suggests that the remediation of everyday urban life through ICTs involves subtle shifts in the spatial, temporal, scalar, and material processes which together help to constitute urban change, and which are all too often overlooked in conventional and binary approaches opposing the ‘virtual’ realm of new technologies to ‘real’ urban places.

Technological solutions to domestic energy reduction are insufficient without the cooperation of inhabitants. It does not matter how much energy hypothetically could be saved by efficient technologies if no one wants to live in the properties, install or use efficient lighting and heating. Therefore, to improve the uptake and effectiveness of household energy-efficiency interventions, it is necessary to understand ‘why people react to particular energy-efficiency interventions in the ways they do?’ An analysis is presented of in-depth interviews with 50 inhabitants who participated in one of four domestic energy-efficiency interventions. The findings indicate that issues such as aesthetic tastes and effects on lifestyle are central to why people reject economically viable, simple and well-understood domestic energy-efficiency interventions. Les solutions technologiques à la réduction de la consommation d'énergie domestique ne peuvent suffire s'il n'y a pas de coopération de la part des habitants. Peu importe combien d'énergie pourrait hypothétiquement être économisée grâce à des technologies performantes si personne ne veut vivre dans de tels logements, installer ou utiliser un éclairage et du chauffage performants. Par conséquent, afin d'améliorer l'acceptation et l'efficacité d'interventions destinées à améliorer le rendement énergétique des logements, il est nécessaire de comprendre « pourquoi les gens réagissent comme ils le font à des interventions particulières qui visent à améliorer le rendement énergétique ? » Il est présenté une analyse d'entretiens approfondis avec 50 habitants qui ont participé à l'une des quatre interventions visant à améliorer le rendement énergétique des logements. Les constatations faites indiquent que les questions telles que les goûts esthétiques et les conséquences sur le style de vie sont essentielles pour expliquer pourquoi les gens rejettent des interventions destinées à améliorer le rendement énergétique des logements, qui sont économiquement viables, simples et bien comprises. Mots clés: ampoules CFL (lampe fluorescente compacte) demande énergétique rendement énergétique logement habitants éclairage acceptation par les utilisateurs comportement des utilisateurs