We study dimensional reductions of noncommutative electrodynamics on flat
space which lead to gauge theories of gravitation. For a general class of such
reductions, we show that the noncommutative gauge fields naturally yield a
Weitzenbock geometry on spacetime and that the induced diffeomorphism invariant
field theory can be made equivalent to a teleparallel formulation of gravity
which macroscopically describes general relativity. The Planck length is
determined in this setting by the Yang-Mills coupling constant and the
noncommutativity scale. The effective field theory can also contain
higher-curvature and non-local terms which are characteristic of string theory.
Some applications to D-brane dynamics and generalizations to include the
coupling of ordinary Yang-Mills theory to gravity are also described.Comment: 31 pages LaTeX; References adde