Pandas is a high-performance Python data analysis library that can handle large datasets that are tabular (similar to a database), ordered/unordered, labeled matrices, or unlabeled statistical data. GeoPandas is simply a geospatial extension to Pandas that builds upon Shapely, Fiona, PyProj, Matplotlib, and Descartes, all of which must be installed. It allows you to easily perform operations in Python, which would otherwise require a spatial database such as PostGIS. You can download a wheel file for GeoPandas from http://www.lfd.uci.edu/~gohlke/pythonlibs/#panda.
The following script opens a shapefile and dumps it into GeoJSON. Then, it creates a map with matplotlib:
>>> import geopandas
>>> import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
>>> gdf = geopandas.GeoDataFrame
>>> census = gdf.from_file("GIS_CensusTract_poly.shp")
>>> census...
