flatten geometry series (3D to 2D) in geopandas dataframe

geopandas_convert_geometry_3D_2D.py

# Often when reading in a ShapeFile from Basemap, you'll get: "ValueError: readshapefile can only handle 2D shape types"
# A trick can be to convert your geometry in your GeoPandas Dataframe and restoring the new flattened 2D geometry
# series back into a shapefile and try again.

# edit from http://stackoverflow.com/questions/33417764/basemap-readshapefile-valueerror  

from shapely.geometry import Polygon, MultiPolygon, shape, Point
import geopandas as gp
def convert_3D_2D(geometry):
    '''
    Takes a GeoSeries of 3D Multi/Polygons (has_z) and returns a list of 2D Multi/Polygons
    '''
    new_geo = []
    for p in geometry:
        if p.has_z:
            if p.geom_type == 'Polygon':
                lines = [xy[:2] for xy in list(p.exterior.coords)]
                new_p = Polygon(lines)
                new_geo.append(new_p)
            elif p.geom_type == 'MultiPolygon':
                new_multi_p = []
                for ap in p:
                    lines = [xy[:2] for xy in list(ap.exterior.coords)]
                    new_p = Polygon(lines)
                    new_multi_p.append(new_p)
                new_geo.append(MultiPolygon(new_multi_p))
    return new_geo

geodf_2d = gp.GeoDataFrame.from_file(shp_file) # plug_in your shapefile
geodf_2d.geometry = convert_3D_2D(geodf_2d.geometry) # new geodf with 2D geometry series

# geodf_2d.to_file(path + shapefile.shp, driver = 'ESRI Shapefile') will sore a shapefile with 2D shape types

Thanks! it helped me get 2D Polygons from the KML file from Google Earth.

Thanks so much! This really helped me getting 2D polygons from Google Earth pro!

Is force_2d now the best approach for this?

Thanks! works great.