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 he bought in the elite community three years ago.

Residents have been angered by the news that the Edge plans to construct a house with 19 overlapping roofs, intended to resemble bronze leaves 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 egos can run riot, 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 40km 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 became popular with film stars around 1929, long before it was even a city. For many of the big stars who live there, like Barbra Streisand and Mel Gibson, their Malibu properties constitute their second or third homes.

The 'Bu, as it's known to its intimates, has probably the greatest density of the largest egos anywhere in the world.

Those who make it to owning a Malibu pile or two usually don't 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 $24m. It has 10 bathrooms and six bedrooms, a lagoon pool and a cabana. It also features a gourmet kitchen, a bar, a wine cellar and a cinema.

racket

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, for anyone wishing to sublet it. When TV talk show host Johnny Carson bought his beach house for $10m in 1983, it was then the most expensive house 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 hospitalised last year, George Clooney said he could not put up with the racket and the police helicopters going on in the neighbourhood. He said he hadn't realised Britney Spears was his neighbour until the police came and she was first hospitalised 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 defence some time ago, has also said he's thinking of moving for the same reason.

But, the Malibu effect can manifest in various ways. Cat Stevens had a near-death experience when he almost 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 peed 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".

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 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 means that almost every year these coalesce around October, causing wildfires.

fires

October 2007 was one of the worst years ever, when fires raged for weeks, starting at Malibu Canyon Road and spreading across the Colony and beyond. More than 5,000 acres burned and more than 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.

The historian Mike Davis has written a controversial essay entitled "The case for letting Malibu burn", where he argues it is human vanity to see these fires as a "disaster", rather 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."

Streisand's Malibu home was damaged in a big wildfire in the mid-90s. Her response was to donate it to charity, where it is now open daily for public tours. Ms Streisand was undeterred and bought another huge pile in Malibu.

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

- Patricia Danaher