The London Docklands Development Corporation (LDDC) was a quango agency set up by the UK Government in 1981 to regenerate the depressed Docklands area of east London. During its seventeen-year existence, it was responsible for regenerating an area of 22 square kilometres (8.5 sq mi) in the London Boroughs of Newham, Tower Hamlets and Southwark. LDDC helped to create Canary Wharf, Surrey Quays Shopping Centre, London City Airport, ExCeL London, London Arena and the Docklands Light Railway, bringing more than 120,000 new jobs to the Docklands and making the area highly sought after for housing. Although initially fiercely resisted by local councils and residents, today it is generally regarded as having been a success and is now used as an example of large-scale regeneration, although tensions between older and more recent residents remain.

London's Docklands were at one time the largest and most successful in the world. The West India Docks which were opened in 1802 were followed by the London Docks, East India Docks, and St Katherine's Dock in the years afterwards and Surrey Docks, Millwall Dock and the Royal Docks in the rest of the 19th century. In 1909, after a number of mergers and collapses, the Port of London Authority was established to manage the docks. Tens of thousands of people were employed by the docks, as well as other nearby related industries, such as flour mills.

During World War II, the docks area was heavily bombed during the Blitz, in an attempt to destroy London's economy and weaken the war effort. This damaged or destroyed much of the docklands infrastructure, as well as almost a third of the area's housing.

There was a brief resurgence during the 1950s but the docks were empty by 1980. The main reason was containerisation: goods used to be brought into the UK by relatively small ships and unloaded by hand; from the 1970s onwards most trade was carried within intermodal containers (shipping containers) or by truck on roll-on/roll-off ferries.

Between 1961 and 1971, almost 83,000 jobs were lost in the five boroughs in the Docklands area (Greenwich, Lewisham, Newham, Tower Hamlets and Southwark). A large percentage of the jobs which were lost were from large transnational corporations which had previously provided good job security. The decline was heightened by government policies which favoured the growth of industry outside London.

The housing in the Docklands area was nearly all council-owned terraced housing and flats. There was no commercial infrastructure such as banks or building societies or any new office accommodation.

The London Docklands Development Corporation was established by the then Secretary of State for the Environment, Michael Heseltine, under section 135 of the Local Government, Planning and Land Act 1980. It was financed by a grant from central government and from the proceeds from the disposal of land for development.

The corporation acted as a catalyst benefiting from the full range of planning authority powers (principally those of development control).