Large-scale development projects take shape before implementation through processes that render a territory knowable, frame the problem, and set priorities for intervention; yet evaluations often focus on implementation and its subsequent effects. This article examines how Khuzestan was framed as a territory endowed with resources and capacities of national significance, how this framing evolved through development programs and became embedded in the design and institutional organization of sugarcane projects, and how it related to local communities, livelihoods, local institutions, and the environment. The analytical framework is grounded in the concepts of state legibility and the technicalization of development; it draws on historical institutionalism to explain the consolidation of initial framings and also uses the distinction between planned space and lived space as a complementary analytical lens. The study employs a qualitative case-study method and an interpretive-historical approach, based on the analysis of documents, technical reports, historical sources, and fourteen semi-structured interviews. The findings show that Khuzestan was understood less in relation to its history, society, institutions, and livelihood practices than as a territory endowed with resources and capacities that could be mobilized to achieve national objectives. This framing acquired institutional form through the Khuzestan Development Program, the Dez Project, Haft Tappeh, Karun, and the Sugarcane Development Project. Land was considered primarily in terms of its suitability for development and cultivation, water as an allocable resource, and local communities mainly as affected populations, landowners subject to acquisition, or a labor force. To explain this process, the article proposes the concept of “epistemic reduction of territory,” referring to the dominance of technical and economic knowledge, its institutionalization in rules and organizations, and weak feedback channels for revision. Part of the divide between planned Khuzestan and lived Khuzestan thus took shape before implementation, through the framing of territory and the institutional consolidation of intervention priorities.