I have always wanted a quick and simple way to view what the outcome of my geoprocessing looked like without having to open a Desktop GIS everytime, and the only alternatives have traditionally been to install Matplotlib and a bunch of other heavy dependencies, spend hours trying to learn them, only to complicate my script with lengthy and confusing syntax that I still don’t quite get (what does it even mean to “add data to an axis”?). All I wanted to do was to view my shapefile.
So as a new addition to our list of resources, I decided to write and just finished and released a new geo-library that does exactly this, the Python Geographic Visualizer (GeoVis). It is lightweight, has no dependencies, and lets you view or save an image of your shapefile with just a single line of code. It is also possible to build a map from scratch and play around with colors and symbols. Read more or try it for yourself by clicking here and you can easily create maps like the one above (though that map was cropped to better fit the post).
Python GIS Resources 