The aim of the project is the identification and documentation of the significant cultural practices of urban life, to separate the citizens' relations to the street, the neighbourhood, and the city as a whole. This research also focuses on the continuities and permanent components that structure city life, as well as the effect of urban change on the rhythm of life. In short, the project hopes to demonstrate how the people of Quebec City, by appropriating a territory and adapting themselves to change over time, have created an image of a symbolic urban complex. To attain these goals, we planned to focus on individual informants, social actors and primary groups. The concept of primary group, originally used in the context of human socialization, was subsequently used to explain the relationships between individuals.
Individuals form small groups because they share the same values and goals.
These compacts, close knit groups comprise systems wherein intense interactions demand strict conformity from all their members. The primary group, the group with which one is associated, thus becomes a reference group where its members find explanations, advice, and interpretations. As such, it is a system which moulds the reaction of its individual members as they interact with stimuli from the outside world. At the most fundamental level, the production of meaning is a social process because the members of primary groups construct a social reality which provides them with a world view. As such, each group constructs its own symbolic field of meaning.