  We find unitary and local theories of higher curvature gravity in the
vielbein formalism, known as the Poincar\'{e} gauge theory by utilizing the
equivalence to the ghost-free massive bigravity. We especially focus on three
and four dimensions but extensions into a higher dimensional spacetime are
straightforward. In three dimensions, a quadratic gravity
$\mathcal{L}=R+T^2+R^2$, where $R$ is the curvature and $T$ is the torsion with
indices omitted, is shown to be equivalent to zwei-dreibein gravity and free
from the ghost at fully non-linear orders. In a special limit, new massive
gravity is recovered. When the model is applied to the AdS/CFT correspondence,
unitarity both in the bulk theory and in the boundary theory implies that the
torsion must not vanish. On the other hand, in four dimensions, the absence of
ghost at non-linear orders requires an infinite number of higher curvature
terms, and these terms can be given by a schematic form $R(1+R/\alpha
m^2)^{-1}R$ where $m$ is the mass of the massive spin-2 mode originating from
the higher curvature terms and $\alpha$ is an additional parameter that
determines the amplitude of the torsion. We also provide another
four-dimensional ghost-free higher curvature theory that contains a massive
spin-0 mode as well as the massive spin-2 mode.
