I think of all the town's around Calgary Cochrane probably has the best bones. A bit of a facelift and a couple midrise developments would go a really long way.
My least favorite by far is Chestermere... It's literally like a suburb broke off of the city and floated 10km east. The city doesn't have any real amenities and probably less than a dozen local businesses.
Calgary's regional dominance in housing has stayed remarkably stable despite the growth of the communities around. If I remember correctly, Calgary takes about 85 - 95% of all population growth on any given year for a few decades at least. All cities get more poly-centric (from one major activity/jobs centre to multiple and many clusters) as they get bigger, but Calgary's uni-city, aggressive annexation approach has probably kept some of this transition less visible as much of it is happening within the boundaries. Major secondary clusters such as universities and major hospitals are all within Calgary, for example.
Industrial /warehouse jobs is a different story. The Balzac effect seems very real and cheap large format land next to the provincial highway network is hard to compete with for land within the city. Industrial land is taxed far higher than residential so it's more lucrative for municipalities to have within their boundaries. I would expect lots of competition and fights over industrial and employment market share between Calgary and the other actors in the region. Whether anyone - Calgary included - can actually influence industrial location choice is another matter.
The lengthy history of inter-municipality competition has very mixed results and is likely pointless at the regional scale. It's a clear benefit to get a job to move from Vancouver to Calgary, but less clear when it moves from Rockyview into the city a kilometre away. Sure - there's property tax benefits on paper, but Calgary may have to give such a deal to compete with cheap regional land that Calgary might not get that benefit anyways. It's a classic race-to-the-bottom issue that probably doesn't create much value for any municipality.
Airdrie may find it has the same problem to develop an office cluster from nothing within it's core - it's a good idea on paper and I am sure there's some local demand for accountants or dentists that could cluster there, but the competition in the region from Calgary's existing clusters remains enormous.
In the longest run, I see no reason Airdrie, Cochrane and others don't go the same way as Abbottsford first then Laval or Mississauga later. They'll keep growing, developing more and more jobs and local activity but remaining fully integrated and dependent on Calgary and the parent region. If the region ever gets to 3+ million, it'll become less useful to talk about Calgary v. the other towns as everyone will be mixed in together.