The well heeled neighbours of The Edge in Malibu will have to wait until June to discover if the U2 guitarist is going to be granted planning permission to construct five houses on the site which he bought in the elite community three years ago.
Residents have been up in arms for the past few weeks at the news that The Edge plans to construct a house with 19 overlapping roofs, intended to resemble bronze leave being blown along the Pacific ridge, in an environmentally sensitive area of the colony.

“ The Edge has more money than God,” said Candace Brown, one activist and local opponent of the Edge’s plan. “This is not what Malibu is about. Why does he need to spoil the mountain for everyone?”

So what is Malibu about? It takes a lot of money to live there and other egos have previously run riot there, so how to explain the antipathy to The Edge’s plans?

When Mel Gibson was arrested in that notorious drunk driving incident by LA police two years ago, he didn’t scream the standard “DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?” Instead his rant was: “I OWN MALIBU” – a hitherto unheard of definition of self-importance and self-worth. But then, as so many licence plates out here say, “Malibu: A way of Life”, so why not also “a state of mind”?

The 26 miles of coast north of Los Angeles that forms the city of Malibu is nearly more famous for the large number of movie stars and musicians who make it their homes than for its stunning natural beauty.

The Malibu Colony first began to become popular with film stars around 1929, long before it was even a city. For many of the big stars who live there like Barbara Streisand and Mel Gibson, their Malibu properties easily constitute their second or third homes.

The “‘Bu”, as those intimate with it sometimes know it, has probably the greatest density of the largest egos anywhere in the world.

Those who make it to owing a Malibu pile or two usually don’t do believe in doing things by halves, even before they get there. A few months before Mel Gibson’s drunken anti-Semitic rant, he had just bought his second California home for a mere $24m. Not only does if have 7,000 square feet of living space, ten bathrooms and six bedrooms, a lagoon pool and a cabana. It also features a gourmet kitchen, a bar, a wine cellar and a cinema.

Shortly after moving there with his wife and seven children, he built a church on the property, estimated to be worth $4m. The whole shebang and the famous neighbours had clearly gone to his head the night he went on the last tear of his life.

The monthly rent on Sting’s pad there is $35,000 per month, for anyone wishing to sublet it. When Johnny Carson bought his beach house for $10 million in 1983, it was then the most expensive house ever sold in LA. It included 24 carat gold bathroom fittings, a waterfall and 11,000 square feet of living space.

But while most of the residents of the colony are flattered by the proximity of their well heeled and famous neighbours, some new money has lowered the tone in the eyes of some. Imagine.

Shortly before Britney Spears was hospitalized last year, George Clooney said he could not put up with the racket and the police helicopters going on in the neighborhood. He said he hadn’t realized Britney Spears was his neighbour until the police came and she was first hospitalized early in January. He is now talking of selling up and moving because of the on-going commotion. Even Mel Gibson, who spoke up in her defense some time ago, has also said he’s thinking of moving too for the same reason.

But the Malibu effect can manifest in various different ways. Cat Steven’s had a near death experience when he nearly drowned while swimming in the sea near his Malibu home in 1976. The incident clearly had a profound and not to mention, life-changing effect on him, causing him to embrace Islam and change his name to Yusuf Islam.

Martin Sheen, who is the honorary mayor of Malibu and generally well liked by his peers and the public alike, really pissed off his neighbours when he announced on national television that the homeless were welcome in Malibu. Hundreds of homeless sleep on the beach at nearby Santa Monica, but when irate Malibuites, horrified by Sheen’s invitation, decided to charter a bus to ferry the homeless to Sheen’s home, the gates of his residence remained firmly closed. He never mentioned the topic again.

The homes of the uber wealthy in Malibu almost all face the sea and while technically the beaches are all public, it is almost impossible for a non-resident to navigate their way to the beach, unless they go through private property to get there. In California, the most concise threat to would be burglars or trespassers is the sign outside most rich houses which simply says “Armed Response”. So the plain people of California or elsewhere are really unlikely to set foot on its pristine beaches.

So many movie moguls, as well as stars live in Malibu, many of them proximate to the famous Canyon Beach. There is a large rock there, where many studio heads meet and walk and work out and where so many deals have been agreed, that everyone now knows it as “Deal Maker’s Rock.”

For all of its famous residents, lush beauty and gorgeous scenery, Malibu is not for the faint-hearted. The area is hit by wildfires in the autumn and mudslides in the spring. The combination of three large, deep gorges and canyons, where seasonal water causes vegetation growth, arid hot Santa Ana winds, a naturally dry topography and a climate that makes combustible material and almost every year these coalesce around October causing wildfires.

October 2007 saw was one of the worst years ever, when fires raged for weeks, starting at Malibu Canyon Road and spreading across the Colony and beyond. Over 5,000 acres burned and over 14,000 people were forced to evacuate. While it is still widely believed that the fires were started by human hands, wildfires like these occur in nature anyway where all of these topographical elements are in place. It is a way of nature clearing brush.

The historian Mike Davis has written a controversial essay entitled “The case for letting Malibu burn”, where he argues that it is simply human vanity to see these fires as a “disaster”, than viewing them as natural ecological occurrences.

“ Such periodic disasters are inevitable as long as private residential development is tolerated in the fire ecology of the Santa Monicas,” he said. “Make your home in Malibu, in other words, and you eventually will face the flames.”

Mudslides are another risk in Malibu, as the wildfires stripping the countryside of vegetation that might that would otherwise hold the soil together during heavy rainfall.

Of course this has been read as sour grapes and the swipe of a socialist, but Malibu’s neighbours in Santa Monica frequently gripe about Malibu leaching its water supply and using questionable methods for disposing of its sewage.

Barbara Streisand’s Malibu home was damaged in a big wildfire in the mid-90’s. Her response was to donate it to charity, where it is now open daily for public tours. Ms Streisand was undeterred and instead of moving back to her Beverly Hills home, she bought another huge pile in Malibu.

SIDEBAR
Malibu’s famous residents and The Edge’s neighbours include
Pierse Brosnan, Roma Downey, Pamela Anderson, Cher, Danny deVito, Richard Gere, John Cusack, Jennifer Anniston, Anthony Hopkins, Tom Hanks, Goldie Hawn, Kurt Russell, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Axl Rose, Olivia Newton John, John Lydon, Tea Leoni, Robert Redford, David Geffen, David Duchovny, Jim Carrey, Steven Spielberg, Mark Burnett, Charlize Theron and Stuart Townsend.