title: Basemap readshapefile ValueError
body: <p>I downloaded a map from <a href="http://www.census.gov/geo/maps-data/" rel="nofollow">US Census</a> in shapefile format. It has all the required information that I need, but for som reason there's a specific map that I need it's giving me this error:</p>
  
  <pre><code>Traceback (most recent call last):
    File "C:/Users/Leb/Desktop/Python/Kaggle/mapp.py", line 17, in &lt;module&gt;
      shp_info = m.readshapefile('gis/cb_2014_us_state_5m', 'states', drawbounds=True)
    File "C:\Program Files\Python 3.5\lib\site-packages\mpl_toolkits\basemap\__init__.py", line 2162, in readshapefile
      raise ValueError('readshapefile can only handle 2D shape types')
  ValueError: readshapefile can only handle 2D shape types
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>More specifically <a href="http://www.census.gov/geo/maps-data/data/cbf/cbf_state.html" rel="nofollow">these</a> set of files give me the error. As you can see, I downloaded the <code>5m</code> resolution shapefile.</p>
  
  <p>This is the code that I'm using to execute the command:</p>
  
  <pre><code>import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
  from mpl_toolkits.basemap import Basemap as Basemap
  
  m = Basemap(llcrnrlon=-119, llcrnrlat=22, urcrnrlon=-64, urcrnrlat=49,
              projection='lcc', lat_1=33, lat_2=45, lon_0=-95)
  shp_info = m.readshapefile('gis/cb_2014_us_state_5m', 'states', drawbounds=True)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p><strong>Questions:</strong></p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>Do I need to convert this through <code>Fiona</code>? or <code>ArcGIS</code>? in order to
  change it to the proper format.</li>
  <li>Is there a better alternative to <code>basemap</code>?</li>
  </ol>