GeoPandas

Pandas is a high-performance Python data analysis library, which 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 enables 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 to GeoJSON; it then creates a map with matplotlib:

>>> import geopandas
>>> import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
>>> gdf = geopandas.GeoDataFrame
>>> census = gdf.from_file("GIS_CensusTract_poly.shp")
>>> census.plot()
>>> plt.show()

The following image is the resulting map plot of the previous commands: