workaround for importing shapefile into geopandas

shp2geopandas.py

import shapefile
import geopandas as gp

def convert_shapefile(filepath, crs=None):
    # Function to read an ESRI shapefile and return a geopandas GeoDataFrame
    reader = shapefile.Reader(filepath)

    # Extract the column names for the data
    fields = reader.fields[1:]
    field_names = [field[0] for field in fields]

    buffer = []
    for sr in reader.shapeRecords():
        atr = dict(zip(field_names, sr.record))
        geom = sr.shape.__geo_interface__
        buffer.append(dict(type="Feature", geometry=geom, properties=atr))
    frame = gp.GeoDataFrame.from_features(buffer, crs=crs)
    return frame